The Origins of Soggy Box

Soggy Box traces its origins to a stormy night in Western Wales, UK, in June 2000. Five weary travelers arrived in the port of Holy Head, Wales, prepared to travel by boat to Ireland. Inclement weather and stormy conditions on the Irish Sea, however, led to the complete cancellation of all ferry service for the day. Thus the travelers were forced to take shelter for the evening. They managed to acquire the last five beds at the Bangor Youth Hostel, a student lodging house in Bangor, Wales. They then set out into the stormy evening in search of good drink and food. Both were found at (to the best of our memory) Yr Hen Glan ("The Old Glan"), a local pub.

Bored at the pub, the travelers resorted to playing drinking games. They had forgotten cards or dice, and thus were unable to play their then game-of-choice – “Asshole” – or their typical backup game – “3-man.” So instead they resorted to a rousing game of Speed Quarters, but using British pound coins in lieu of quarters, and using Murphy’s Stout in lieu of shitty American beer. The game of Quarters was (as it often is) rather disastrous. The table was too small, and the coins were too heavy; as a result, the coins almost never stayed on the table, and were causing increasingly significant bits of damage and annoyance throughout the pub.

The boys were one stray pound from being thrown out – something had to be done. One of the travelers recalled the British drinking game “Matchbox”, in which one tried to flip a small box of wooden matches to land it on its long edge. Matchbox is an adequate drinking game, but ultimately rather unexciting. But the travelers (not sure which) had a novel idea: They could combine the match-box flipping element of Matchbox with the catch-your-neighbor element of Speed Quarters. And thus, Soggy Box was born.

Basic rules were quickly worked out. As in Quarters, two boxes would always been in play. Landing a flip on the long side meant the matchbox would pass to the player to your left. If you were still flipping the matchbox when your neighbor successfully flipped his, then you were “caught” and must drink a half beer. To make the match-box flipping sufficiently challenging, it was declared that the flip must clear one’s 20 oz. imperial pint glass.

The high, arcing tosses required to clear a pint glass meant that, eventually (and inevitably), a matchbox would land in one’s beer. As in Matchbox, the penalty for a matchbox in the beer was a full beer – and no tossing until the beer was drained. It was here that it became clear that stout (e.g., Murphy’s or Guinness) was the only appropriate beer for the game. A matchbox landing in a foamy cushion of stout was much less likely to be ruined. Eventually, of course, even the hardiest of matchboxes would fall prey to the foamy suds, and hence the name was born – Soggy Box.

The travelers spent the next 10 days traveling through Ireland, Northern Ireland, Wales, and England, working each day to perfect game play and the rules...