Lose The Game - Origins

The Origins of The Game

Some players believe that The Game has always existed as an undiscovered concept since the birth of time. Such interpretations mean that The Game was never created, only discovered, and, of course, immediately lost.

The following is a timeline of events which may have been involved in the emergence of The Game. Links to reliable sources supporting this evidence are provided. Any unsourced information was obtained via direct contact with those involved. Events supporting the CUFS Finchley Central origin theory (see below) are in bold:

~1840: Russian writer Leo Tolstoy plays a game with his brother where they must "stand in a corner and not think of the white bear... but could not possibly manage, not to think of the white bear". (source)
1863: Another Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, mentions the same white bear game in one of his works. (source)
1947: Paul Goodman describes a variant of the white bear game involving pink elephants. (source)
~1955: John Horton Conway and David Fowler matriculate to study mathematics together at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge, UK, under the supervision of Sir Christopher Zeeman. (source)
1968: Ralph White describes the pink elephant variant as follows: "The moment anyone tries not to think about a pink elephant he is already thinking about it, and has lost the game."(source)
1969: David Fowler and American mathematics professor, Anatole Beck, write an article about the game Finchley Central: "Two players alternate naming the stations of the London Underground. First to say 'Finchley Central' wins." (source)
1976: John Conway describes a game called Endgame in which the first person to make a move loses. (source)
~1976: The Cambridge University Science Fiction Society (CUSFS) create a variant of Finchley central in which the first person to think about Finchley Central loses. (unsourced)
~1978: The BBC Radio 4 show I'm Sorry I haven't A Clue popularises the game Mornington Crescent, like Finchley Central except that the objective is to make the game seem extremely strategic and skillful by referring to complex and confusing rules that, in fact, do not exist. Two of the panelists, Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor, studied at Cambridge University shortly after John Conway and David Fowler. (source: I'm Sorry I haven't A Clue 6th series)
1982: Mark Haslett, a member of the 1976 CUSFS, and working for BNFL, Risley, Warrington, explains Finchley Central to his colleague, Adrian McCrickard. (unsourced)
1987: American social psychologist, Daniel Wegner, performs psychological studies based on Tolstoy's white bear game, demonstrating that trying not to think about something only makes you think about it even more (ironic process theory). (source)
1995: UK newspaper the Independent, writes an article about two Martians playing Finchley Central after they missed their bus stop. (source)
2002: Paul Taylor posts the first known description of The Game in its modern form on his blog. (source)
2007: Adrian McCrickard emails us about learning the CUSFS Finchley Central variant in 1982. In his recollection, the game was created at Finchley Central station while Mark Haslett was waiting for a train. (unsourced)
2008: After reading an article about The Game in the UK newspaper the Metro, another member of CUSFS, Philip Brice, emails us commenting on the similarity between The Game and the variant of Finchley Central they created in 1976. (unsourced)

The CUSFS Finchley Central Hypothesis

Before 1969: John Conway and/or his classmate David Fowler create the original version of Finchley Central in an attempt to create a game that did not fit the von Neumann definition of a game.
Early 1970s:While lecturing mathematics at the University of Cambridge, John Conway teaches Finchley Central to his student Richard Pinch.
Late 1970s: Richard Pinch teaches Finchley Central to other members of the Cambridge University Science Fiction Society (CUSFS). In attempt to violate the von Neuman definition even further, the CUSFS members create a parody of Finchley Central by reducing its single rule to its logical extreme; the first person to think of Finchley Central loses the game. The rest, as they say, is history.

We have been in direct email contact with the members of the 1970s CUSFS collective, which includes:

Dr Nigel Goldenfeld - "What's scary about all this is that it took so long for it to take over the world."
Mark Haslett - "We did not realise what a viral concept it was and I continue to lose from time to time now 30 years on."
Philip Brice - "The idea developed of a game in which you didn't know you were competing in until you weren't."
Dr Nick Lowe - "Our meetings are still punctuated, and often opened, with the words 'Gah! I lose.'"
Dr Richard Pinch –"..."

So, after more than five years of searching for its origins, is it possible that we've finally tracked down the individuals who masterminded The Game over 30 years ago? Is The Game the result of drunken game theorists, twisting an already twisted game into a form undefinable by game theory, unknowningly unleashing an incurable and highly contagious mind virus on the world?

While there is no hard evidence to prove these claims, we have been in contact with all the above Cambridge graduates and their accounts fit with other evidence we’ve obtained over the years. Unless this is some kind of very elaborate hoax, it is certainly the most plausible account we've heard so far and the closest we've ever come to knowing the true origins of The Game.

Although The Game contains elements of Tolstoy's white bear game, and both John Conway's original version of Finchley Central and his Endgame, the CUSFS Finchley Central variant is the closest thing we've found to The Game without being The Game itself. The key aspect it adds to to the white bear game is that it is ongoing; once you know about it you are playing continuously forever. The only difference that could be argued is whether losing this variant of Finchley Central is caused by thinking about the the London underground station, or the Finchley Central game itself, but knowledge of this game effectively blurs the distinction between the two, making this effectively The Game under a different name. In the original CUSFS variant, loss was announced by raising one's arm in the air, which meant that other people would not lose immediately, but rather when they remembered what the arm-raising signified.

Feel free to use this information to try to find more evidence yourself and be sure to contact us if you do find anything interesting. We are certain there must be online references to The Game ealier than 2002, but it may still be described as Finchley Central or even a different, intermediate, name.

We are currently working on determining the origins of the original version of Finchley Central, and maybe you can help us! We have contacted both John Conway and Anatole Beck (David Fowler passed away in 2004) regarding this matter, but they both must be too deeply immersed in a world of mathematics and game theory to have noticed our emails. So... Do you live near, or study at, the University of Wisconsin or Princeton University? Professor Beck is Yale University Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin, and Professor Conway is John Von Neumann Professor in Applied and Computational Mathematics and Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University. If you could find them in person and ask them what they know about Finchley Central and its origins it could be of awesome significance to determining what is possibly the greatest mystery in the universe, where did The Game come from?

Here is some more useful information and other origin theories: