About MCiOS

This site is a place to play Mornington Crescent and other games which may or may not be based on those played on the BBC Radio 4 program I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue.

The style of play emulates Rob Bunting's original Mornington Crescent server at York.

Formatting moves

Players normally use a small amount of HTML markup for emphasis and for distinguishing moves from the surrounding conversation. The most useful tag to know is bold, which is used like this:

<b>This text will appear in bold.</b>

In particular, a winning move must appear in some kind of markup if it is to be recognized by the server.

In addition to the standard HTML markup, the site supports a nonstandard hide tag. This is typically used in conversation to avoid spoilers. The text <hide>This text is hidden</hide> is replaced by a graphic: . Move the mouse pointer over it to see the text.

Links may be posted using standard HTML, but in order to discourage linkspamming the site prevents you from submitting a move which contains a link unless you also enter a certain well-known value in the small, grey text field next to the posting buttons. What you need to type may change from time to time; to see a hint as to what's required here, either preview the move or attempt to post it. The hint assumes that you have some slight familiarity with the game and its origins. If you don't know the answer, it's reasonable to wonder why you need to post a link to a Mornington Crescent server. There's little point in asking in the chat game: if you get any answer at all it's sure to be a good deal more cryptic than the hint.

Winning

It is well beyond the scope of this document to describe the conditions in which it is possible to win a game; however, assuming you're in a position to do so, you can win the game by entering the winning move in HTML markup -- again, bold is usually used. If the winning move is not given by the game's creator in its introduction, it is probably the standard move for the game of Mornington Crescent. If you're not sure, you can view the source of the page, where the winning move will be shown in comments near the game's title. Note that some games cannot be won.

Game limits

The server limits the number of games which can be active at any given time. It is also possible to enter additional moves and comments to games which have ended. Games which have recently ended or recently had moves or comments added to them continue to be displayed in the finished games section on the front page for about four days after the last move or comment is entered. It is not unknown for finished games to carry on "below the line", sometimes for a very long time.

When a win is challenged the game may be reinstated; when this occurs and a new game was created during the interval, this can result in the limit being exceeded. This isn't considered a problem, though it does mean that more than one game will have to end before any new game can be created.

Real-time chat

In addition to the "permanent" chat game, there is a live chat system which operates in real time. It can be used by any browser that supports the Macromedia Flash plug-in.

Channels

When you connect to the chat server, by default you're talking on an unlabeled channel called 'default'. You can create a custom channel by providing a channel name argument in the URL, thus: http://parslow.com/chatserver/?channel=toast. If the channel already exists, you'll join that conversation in progress; if it doesn't it will be created. Channels are created on demand and destroyed when the last participant leaves.

Server information

MCiOS consists of three rather crude Perl programs, and apart from minor tweaks is essentially unchanged since 1998. The server-side code for the live chat was written in Python in 2001.

The site is served by a G4 Mac mini running Debian stable located at the Pittock Internet Exchange in Portland, Oregon.

The Lure of the Underground poster by Alfred Leete, 1927. It is my belief that this image entered the public domain at the end of 2003. Will be removed if information to the contrary is presented.