Pennying

Pennying is a simple drinking game popular amongst students attending various universities throughout the United Kingdom. Unlike most drinking games, the rules of pennying are almost never explicitly declared to be in force; rather, by putting oneself in a social situation involving the consumption of alcohol, one is implicitly subjected to the rules should a "Pennying" situation occur. This state of affairs is most likely to be enforced at dinners known as Formal Halls where cheap wine is drunk and it is common for complete strangers to "Penny" each other. In Cambridge, pennying is especially prevalent at "formal hall swaps", or other dinner equivalent, between two dining societies- one female, one male. In most cases, sufficient wine will be provided so that there is enough to go round, and hence the aim is to get other people to drink as much as possible, or to avoid drinking oneself, due to the copious resources available. The occurrence is less common in pubs where drinks are larger and more expensive.

Rules Of Pennying

Accepted rules

Should someone manage to slip a penny into another person's drink after officially announcing pennying will take place on the night, the owner of the drink must completely consume it within a set period of time - usually two or three minutes or less, or in any case the next time the victim touches the glass - and in one go, i.e. without pausing between sips for breath or respite (quaffing the drink).

* The victim of the pennying is thereafter said to have been "pennied".

* The pennier cannot penny a glass that he or she has poured. As such, cooperation is often an essential part of the pennying process.
* A person unknowingly slipping a penny into a drink that already contains one is obliged to consume that drink as if he or she themselves had been pennied (double-pennying).
* The pennier must have a quantity of drink in his or her own glass to be eligible to penny. If someone pennies when his or her glass is empty, he or she is obliged to refill the glass and drink from it as if he or she has been pennied.
* The owner of a pennied drink is allowed to keep the penny. Therefore, a "pennied" person has the small comfort of a free penny at the end of their forfeit, whereas someone guilty of "double-pennying" must forfeit both pennies to the owner of the drink.
* It is generally frowned upon, possibly even to the point of taboo, to refuse to drink a pennied beverage, or to "double-penny" intentionally a beverage with the intention of earning a free drink.
* If someone tries to penny a glass, but misses, he or she must down their own drink.
* In Australia, the official currency denomination used for pennying is either the ten cent (10c) coin or twenty cent (20c) coin, depending which university one considers; as such, pennying in Australia is known more widely as coining.
* Paper money is invalid for the purposes of pennying. (See 'History of Pennying' below; as paper floats, the drink poses no danger to the Sovereign.)
* Professor Stephen Hawking is not to be pennied. This is not actually a rule, but is now widely accepted after two Robinson College students attending a Caius College formal hall were fined in excess of £50 and given a lifelong ban from the college for pennying his dessert.

Variations and additional rules

Whether you follow these rules will likely depend on social pressure; bear in mind that there is no standard set of rules that you are obligated to follow. Where guests from one college are dining at another's formal hall, the rules followed by the hosts tend to apply. Dubious sources of authority are often cited, for example, at Cambridge, quite often the Presidents of college "Dining Societies" are said to arbitrate on the rules.

* At University College, of Durham University, pennying is instead known as corking - unsurprisingly involving the use of corks rather than pennies.
* Much discussion exists over rules regarding pennying an empty glass. In some places this is frowned upon, but in many Cambridge Colleges the "Empty glass is a full glass rule" is often enforced. In these situations, if a diner has an empty glass pennied, the diner must fill it up and down it. This leads to certain elements of trickery, for example, if a glass has a small amount of wine in it, a potential pennier will double penny the near-empty glass, finish it, and then penny the glass, forcing the glass's owner to down a full glass.
* In some places, a drink may only be pennied once the owner has drunk from it, unless the owner poured his/her own beverage (accepting the drink). In Cambridge, however, such a rule tends not to exist.
* Suitably liquid foods may be used in place of drinks: soup and yoghurt are two prime targets. The victim must finish the pennied item of food in one go and without the use of cutlery.
* Similarly, a dessert may be pennied, the objective being to consume it hands free. However, this, in most Cambridge Colleges, must be done with a 5p piece. Here, the victim has been "silvered", and must thus consume their dessert without silver ware.
* Some would maintain that one should not place one's hand over a glass or bottle ('guarding') in order to avoid its being pennied.
* If there are no pennies to hand (or if pennies have been banned due to their damaging effect on dishwashers), special powers may be invoked by which honorary penny status is conveyed upon a seemingly mundane object such as a fork, spoon or Smartie. To convey such a status one must place the item in the target beverage and declare it to be "The Knife of Strife", "The Spoon of Doom", or some such other rhyming title.
* In some places, Double-penniers are required, in addition to consuming the double-pennied drink, to replace the drink owner's drink with one equivalent in genre and volume to the pennied beverage, or alternatively of the owner's choosing (of a similar price). This acts as an effective deterrent to those who would intentionally double-penny a drink with the goal of winning a free one. This is usually not a problem at Cambridge formal halls, due to the large amounts of wine that tends to be available.
* Coins not featuring the reigning Sovereign (foreign coins and those featuring deceased monarchs) do not incur the "pennying" forfeit as their submerged nature poses no metonymical danger to the Sovereign (see History Of Pennying below). Test cases involving abdicated monarchs are not known to have arisen while one was still alive (the only example in British history being Edward VIII), though theoretically a Pennied person would owe no allegiance to someone not of the direct line of succession of the British Royal Family.
* In most Oxbridge colleges, once an individual has pennied a fellow diner they are then immune from being pennied by the initial penny-ee until the penny-ee has pennied another diner. Should the initial penny-ee proceed to penny the initial pennier without the prior pennying of a separate individual then this shall be declared to be a back-pennying and thus invalid. This rule is intended to disestablish cliques or vendettas which may form and promote social interaction.
* In most Cambridge colleges, anyone holding his or her glass above the surface of the table is immune from being pennied at that moment.
* A variation on the pennying tradition is Shoeing - if there is a spillage resulting from an unsuccessful pennying attempt, or any another unsocial/drunken act, the senior member of the table is obliged to remove his shoe. It is presented as a receptacle for the remains of the unpennied wine, which must then be drunk from the shoe by the pennying miscreant. This is used during Boat Club crew-dates at Oriel College, Oxford.
* Pennying has even managed to adapt to the narrow-necked alcopop bottles - these are no longer safe from pennies folded in a vice, which are thus slim enough in profile to be dropped into the bottles through their openings.
* Members of the Trinity Hall Guards MUST not penny other member Guards. Failure to comply will result in communal punishment. In the past this usually constitutes the requirement of guilty Guard to 'down' the remnants of his bottle of wine.

Alternatives to Pennying

If the act of Pennying with a penny has been banned then there are accepted alternatives which can be used instead. These include Smarties, Lovehearts, M&Ms, or a bottle cap folded in half.Note that Pennying accompanies the International Drinking Rules observed in some social circles.

Variations between universities

The University Of Bath Snowsports Club, and other Sporting and Social groups affiliated with the University of Bath, engage in "Golf Balling". Essentially, a golf ball is dropped into the beverage. The beverage must must be consumed whilst spectators sing "We Like To Drink With Barney, 'cos Barney is our mate, he lives for fornication, but never ever ever gets laid. Get it down, you zulu warrior, get it down you zulu CHIEF CHIEF CHIEF CHIEF (until they finish)", replacing Barney with the drinker's name. When golf balls have not been available, other items such as water-proof cameras have been known to be used. The same rules apply to golf balling (or similar alternatives) as to pennying. The most important variation of the Bath Snow Sports game is that any beverage is in play as long as a person has christened it (drunk from it) and, importantly, that it is arms reach of that person. The person does not have to be holding the beverage for them to be 'golf balled'

The Oxford and the Cambridge rules vary. In Oxford, one must have the glass in one's hand for it to be eligible for pennying, the only exception being at dinners in the Great Hall of Christ Church, Oxford where such a condition is not required for a pennying to be valid. If a glass on the table is pennied, the pennier must forthwith down the beverage, and buy the intended pennyee a replacement. In Cambridge there is no such rule and pennying may occur at any time, or sometimes the exact opposite rule is played.

The University of Durham has a variety of rules varying from college to college. In Hatfield College, Durham rules are used that are similar to those stated above for Oxford, except that two pence coins are used instead of pennies, and pennying the water jug is generally seen as fair game, although liable to incur a "sconce" (or fine) from the JCR Senior Man. A further example would be University College, Durham whose members utilise corks in place of pennies. This leads to corks being a valuable commodity amongst castle undergraduates, and rules dictating who owns the cork in someone's drink are complicated and vary between friendship groups. Some also play rules that differentiate between different types of cork (for example, a champagne cork might result in two glasses being downed). Castlemen also play differently to most other Durham colleges in that they only can only 'cork' when their victim's glass is on the table (but in the case of liquid food, it must be held, to show possession). At Grey College, pennying at Formals was banned by the Master (Prof. Martyn Chamberlain) in 2003. At Trevelyan College, some students have taken to bending 2p coins so they may fit down the neck of a wine bottle, which then must be downed. Double pennying results in the second pennier only having to down their drink, and not the penny-ie.

The University of Bristol rules state that for a glass to be "in play" some of the contents must have been imbibed by the owner, and the owner must be at the table. Shielding of glasses is therefore very common and is not frowned upon. Any coins bearing the monarch's face may be used, although coppers tend to be the most popular. Double Pennying is not regarded as an offence on the person adding the second (or further) coin but rather a shameful act on the part of the person who has been pennied for not finishing their drink with alacrity.

Pennying has been explicitly banned from both St. Anne's College and Brasenose College, Oxford, as well as Magdalene College, Cambridge. Brasenose's code of conduct refers to the illicit activity as “the practice of dropping a coin in a cup to coerce someone to consume the contents." Student Newspapers reported that the St Anne's College authorities and the Junior Common Room had come into serious conflict when the Freshers of 2006 were informed that pennying remained 'a forbidden pleasure' in one of their guides to the college.

History of Pennying

The oft-quoted reason given for the need to "drink up" is that the Sovereign (depicted on the obverse or "heads" side of the submerged penny) is in danger of drowning and must be rescued immediately. Cries of "God Save the Queen!" may be heard, uttered immediately prior to the consumption of the beverage. No canonical text outlines the custom of pennying, hence the great variations in its practised rules. Despite there being no evidence that this practice goes back more than a few decades, apocryphal tales and oral tradition among some within the University of Cambridge would attribute its origin to the time of the reign of Henry VIII.

While the historicity of this account of the origin of Pennying is almost as doubtful as the validity of its posing actual mortal danger to the Sovereign, Pennying has certainly lasted long enough to become a credible tradition within Oxford, Cambridge and a few other places (such as the University of Durham) elsewhere in the United Kingdom. It continues to be a very enjoyable drinking game, and the practice of pennying strangers often leads to the forging of new friendships.

This practice is similar but probably unrelated to the (almost certainly older) practice of sconcing at Oxford.

References

* Anger after college bans pennying News Article, Pg 7, "The Cherwell", October 4, 2006
* A penny for your thoughts Editorial, "The Oxford Student", October 4, 2006
* ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/getwriting/A882722