99 Fun Facts About Board Game History

Which ancient Egyptian board game is often cited as one of the world's oldest?

Senet boards survive from at least 3100 BCE, making it one of the earliest documented board games; sets were buried in pharaohs' tombs and the game came to symbolize the journey to the afterlife.

Which British archaeologist rediscovered the Royal Game of Ur while excavating the Royal Cemetery at Ur?

Leonard Woolley found five gameboards at Ur between 1922 and 1934; the game, from the early third millennium BC, is one of the oldest known.

Which family of 'sowing and counting' board games takes its name from an Arabic word meaning 'to move'?

Mancala refers to a family of strategy games played with seeds or stones and pits, with evidence of its play dating back centuries in Africa and Asia. The name itself comes from the Arabic word 'naqala,' meaning 'to move.'

The game of chess is believed to have originated from an ancient game called Chaturanga in which country?

India's chaturanga flourished by the 6th century; its pieces stood for the four divisions of an army, infantry, cavalry, elephants and chariots.

Which ancient Chinese board game was one of the 'Four Arts' of the cultured gentleman?

Go, or weiqi, was one of the Four Arts of the Chinese scholar alongside calligraphy, painting and the guqin zither; the game has been played in China for more than 2,500 years.

Shahr-e Sukhteh, the 'Burnt City' that yielded a 5,000-year-old board game, is in which country?

Shahr-e Sukhteh in Iran's Sistan and Baluchestan province yielded a Bronze Age gaming board with dice dated to about 3000 BC, often described as the oldest backgammon-like set.

The modern board game Ludo is a simplified version of which ancient Indian cross-and-circle game?

Ludo simplifies Pachisi, India's cross-and-circle race game played on a cloth board with cowrie shells as dice; Mughal emperor Akbar had a life-size court at Fatehpur Sikri where people served as pieces.

Which 5x5-grid game is considered a direct ancestor of modern checkers (draughts)?

The 10th-century Arab scholar Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani mentions the game as Quirkat in his Book of Songs, and it reached Spain with the Moors, appearing in the 13th-century Libro de los juegos.

Monopoly descends from which game, patented by Lizzie Magie in 1904?

The Landlord's Game had two rule sets, and the monopolist one is what modern play is mainly based on; Magie patented it in 1904.

Scrabble inventor Alfred Mosher Butts of Poughkeepsie, New York, worked as what in 1931?

Architect by day, Butts built it as a variation on Lexiko, an earlier word game of his own.

Anthony E. Pratt dreamed up Cluedo while sheltering from air raids in which English city?

Anthony Pratt, a Birmingham musician working in a wartime factory, devised the game at his King's Heath home; Waddingtons launched it in 1949 after his 1947 patent.

Trivial Pursuit, devised by two newspapermen in 1979, comes from which country?

Canada: Chris Haney, a photo editor at the Montreal Gazette, and Scott Abbott, a sports editor at The Canadian Press, devised the game in December 1979.

Which 1995 Klaus Teuber title was among the first Eurogames to catch on outside Europe?

Catan was published by Kosmos in 1995 as Die Siedler von Catan (The Settlers of Catan), won that year's Spiel des Jahres and became the Eurogame that broke through in North America.

The properties on the original Monopoly board were named after locations in and around which place?

Atlantic City, New Jersey, got there via Quaker players who renamed the streets on Lizzie Magie's earlier game to match their town.

Parker Brothers first published Monopoly in which year?

Parker Brothers began selling Monopoly in 1935 after buying Charles Darrow's rights; Darrow's design patent was issued on December 31, 1935.

Elizabeth Magie designed her 1904 realty game to teach the economic ideas of which thinker?

Georgism argues that land rents enrich owners and impoverish tenants; the game was meant to prove it.

The name of the ancient Egyptian 30-square game found in Tutankhamun's tomb literally means what?

Senet means 'passing'; the 30-square game appears in Chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead, where the deceased plays an unseen opponent, and sets were buried with Tutankhamun.

The Royal Game of Ur survived into the 1950s only among the Jewish community of which Indian city?

They called their version 'Asha' and stopped playing when they emigrated to Israel.

Which British Museum curator reconstructed the rules of the Royal Game of Ur from a cuneiform tablet?

Irving Finkel deciphered a cuneiform rules tablet written in 177 BC by the Babylonian scribe Itti-Marduk-balatu, restoring the game's play after more than two millennia.

A 2016 International Go Federation survey found roughly how many people worldwide can play Go?

Over 20 million are current players, most of them in East Asia.

In Go, what are the points added to White's score to compensate for moving second called?

Komi plus territory plus captured stones decides the winner, and the half-point it usually includes means a game can never be tied.

Who claimed the title of first universally recognised World Chess Champion in 1886?

Wilhelm Steinitz beat Johannes Zukertort in 1886 in the first match explicitly contested for the world championship, played in New York, St. Louis and New Orleans.

In 1997, which IBM computer became the first to beat a reigning world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, in a match?

Deep Blue had lost to Kasparov the year before; IBM retired the machine after the rematch.

What is the highest number shown on a standard backgammon doubling cube?

The doubling cube's six faces read 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and 64; it sits at 64 to mean a stake of 1 until the first double is offered.

The doubling cube was introduced to backgammon in which country?

The doubling cube appeared in America in the 1920s, reputedly in New York clubs; it lets a player propose doubling the stakes, which the opponent must accept or concede.

What did Alfred Butts call his 1938 word game before it was renamed Scrabble?

Butts called the 1938 version Criss-Crosswords, setting tile values by counting letter frequencies on the front page of The New York Times; James Brunot renamed it Scrabble in 1948.

How many tiles are in an English-language Scrabble set?

An English Scrabble set has 100 tiles: 98 lettered tiles carrying point values and two blank wild tiles.

The board of Cluedo is reputedly modelled on the Tudor Close Hotel in which English seaside town?

Rottingdean, near Brighton: the mansion layout is said to follow the Tudor Close Hotel there, a mock-Tudor hotel of the 1930s that Pratt is said to have known.

How many rooms are on the classic Cluedo board?

The classic Cluedo board has nine rooms: kitchen, ballroom, conservatory, dining room, billiard room, library, lounge, hall and study; the central space holds the solution envelope.

What did Milton Bradley's 1860 Checkered Game of Life use instead of dice, which were linked to gambling?

It sold 45,000 copies in its first year; the modern spinner version arrived in 1960.

Risk was invented in 1957 by which French film director?

Albert Lamorisse, director of the Oscar-winning 1956 short The Red Balloon, devised Risk in 1957; Parker Brothers released the American edition in 1959.

How many territories are on the standard Risk board?

The classic Risk map has 42 territories grouped into six continents; Parker Brothers released the American edition in 1959.

In Klaus Teuber's island-settling game, the robber must be moved whenever a player rolls what?

Rolling a seven moves the robber: the roller places it on a new hex, which produces nothing until it leaves, and steals a card from a neighbouring player.

Milton Bradley's American version of Snakes and Ladders, sold from 1943, is called what?

Chutes and Ladders replaced the snakes with playground slides when Milton Bradley issued it in 1943; in the Indian original, ladders stood for virtues and snakes for vices.

American checkers was weakly solved in 2007 by a Canadian team led by which computer scientist?

Jonathan Schaeffer's University of Alberta team, builders of the Chinook program, proved in 2007 that perfect play by both sides in checkers ends in a draw.

Candy Land was designed in 1948 by schoolteacher Eleanor Abbott while she was recovering from what?

Eleanor Abbott devised Candy Land while recovering from polio in a San Diego hospital, for the children on the polio ward; Milton Bradley published it in 1949.

Twister was originally developed under what working name before Milton Bradley licensed it in 1966?

Charles Foley and Neil Rabens pitched the game as Pretzel; Milton Bradley renamed it Twister, and Johnny Carson playing it with Eva Gabor on The Tonight Show in 1966 made it a hit.

The first commercial version of Battleship, published in 1931 by the Starex company, was called what?

Starex sold the pad-and-pencil game as Salvo in 1931; Milton Bradley's plastic peg-board Battleship followed in 1967 and Electronic Battleship in 1977.

Ticket to Ride, first released in 2004, was designed by whom?

Alan R. Moon, who had already won the Spiel des Jahres with Elfenland in 1998, designed Ticket to Ride for Days of Wonder; it won the Spiel des Jahres in 2004.

Matt Leacock based his cooperative game Pandemic on which real epidemic?

Matt Leacock has said the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak inspired Pandemic (2008); players start in Atlanta, home of the CDC, and race to cure four diseases before outbreaks overwhelm the world.

The river on a xiangqi board is inscribed with references to which ancient Chinese conflict?

The river bears the characters for 'Chu River, Han border', recalling the Chu–Han War (206–202 BC) between Xiang Yu and Liu Bang; elephants cannot cross it, while soldiers gain sideways movement once they do.

Who applied for an English patent in 1896 for the Pachisi variant he named Royal Ludo?

Alfred Collier's 1896 English patent application for Royal Ludo marks the game's arrival under the Ludo name; the Royal Navy's Uckers is a later descendant.

Which 1946 game hides information from players, unlike a perfect-information game such as chess?

Stratego, first published in the Netherlands in 1946, keeps each piece's rank hidden from the opponent until it attacks or is attacked, unlike chess, where everything is on view.

Harold Murray's 1952 History of Board Games Other Than Chess sorted games into how many categories?

Murray's five categories were race, war, hunt, alignment and mancala games; Robert Bell's Board and Table Games (1960) trimmed the scheme to four.

Elaborate sculptured gaming stones from around 3000 BC, in sets of four, were found in which country?

Başur Höyük in Siirt province, south-eastern Turkey, yielded dozens of small sculpted and painted stone pieces in 2013; dated to about 3000 BC, they are thought to belong to an unknown game.

Which board game originated in Mesoamerica and was played by the Toltecs and Aztecs?

Patolli, a race game played with marked beans as dice on a cross-shaped mat, was played by the Toltecs and Aztecs; Spanish friars recorded it and banned it after the conquest.

Which ancient Egyptian game, played on a coiled-snake board and dated to about 3000–2300 BC, has rules that remain unknown?

Mehen is named for a snake deity; some estimates push it back to 3500 BC, but its scoring and pieces are still speculative.

Which ancient Greek board game do Penelope's suitors play in Homer's Odyssey?

Petteia (pessoi), a strategy game of capturing pieces, is what the suitors play outside Odysseus's palace in Odyssey Book 1; the Roman ludus latrunculorum descended from it.

Which art historian coined the term 'Golden Age' for the board game boom of the 1880s–1920s?

Margaret Hofer, a curator at the New-York Historical Society, used 'Golden Age' in her 2003 book The Games We Played for the 1880s–1920s, when chromolithography and mass production made boxed games cheap.

Monopoly's Marvin Gardens misspells a real neighbourhood whose name begins with what?

Parker Brothers did not acknowledge the error until 1995, when it formally apologised to the residents of Marven Gardens.

In WWII, Britain's Secret Service had Waddingtons hide what in Monopoly sets sent to POWs?

Waddingtons could print on silk, so the maps, money, a compass and a file were tucked into sets sent by fake POW relief charities.

By what name was Monopoly's top-hatted mascot originally known?

Rich Uncle Pennybags first appeared on Chance and Community Chest cards in 1936 and was renamed Mr. Monopoly in 1999.

Anthony Pratt's 1944 patent application gave his whodunit game what one-word name?

Pratt filed the game as Murder! in December 1944; Waddingtons' Norman Watson bought it and renamed it Cluedo, and postwar shortages delayed the launch until 1949.

Which Cluedo suspect's title was swapped for 'Mr.' in the North American version?

The local clergyman became Mr. Green in Clue, and the 2023 edition updated him again to Mayor Green.

James Brunot renamed Alfred Butts's word game Scrabble, a real word meaning what?

'Scrabble' is a real verb meaning to scratch or claw about frantically; Brunot trademarked the name in 1948, kept Butts's letter distribution and rearranged the premium squares.

Who co-designed the modern Game of Life, introduced in 1960?

Reuben Klamer, working with Bill Markham, created the 1960 Game of Life for Milton Bradley's centenary; TV host Art Linkletter endorsed it and his face appeared on the game's money.

Operation's inventor John Spinello sold his rights to Marvin Glass in 1964 for how much?

$500 and the promise of a job after graduation, which never materialised, was the whole deal for a University of Illinois design student.

Connect Four's vertical grid has seven columns and how many rows?

The game was solved in October 1988 by James Dow Allen and, independently, Victor Allis: the first player wins with perfect play.

Under what name was Connect Four sold in the Soviet Union?

The Soviet edition was called Gravitrips; elsewhere the game has gone by Four Up, Plot Four, Find Four and the rather racier Captain's Mistress.

Mouse Trap's chain-reaction contraption is built in the style of which cartoonist's absurdly complicated machines?

Rube Goldberg got credit but no money: designer Marvin Glass admitted the debt but refused to pay any licensing or royalty fees.

What was Goro Hasegawa's job when he patented Othello in Japan in 1971?

Hasegawa was a salesman when he patented Othello in 1971; Tsukuda Original launched it in 1973. He first called it an improvement on reversi, later claiming independent invention in Mito.

Risk was originally released in France in 1957 under what name?

La Conquête du Monde ('The Conquest of the World') was published by Miro in France in 1957; Parker Brothers released the American version as Risk in 1959.

The first modern chess tournament, held in London in 1851, was organized by which player?

Staunton's name also lives on in the standard piece design, which is usually required for competition play.

How many pieces does each backgammon player start the game with?

Each side has 15 checkers: two on the 24-point, five on the 13-point, three on the 8-point and five on the 6-point.

In March 2016 AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol in how many games of their five-game match?

Lee and most top professionals had expected him to win comfortably before the match began.

How many points (line intersections) does a standard 19×19 Go board contain?

A 19×19 board has 361 intersections; a full set holds 181 black and 180 white stones, enough to cover every point, with Black getting the extra stone for moving first.

A standard mahjong set is typically played with how many tiles?

A standard set has 144 tiles: 136 suit and honour tiles plus eight flower and season tiles; Japanese riichi drops the flowers to 136 and American sets add jokers to reach 152.

Jenga takes its name from a Swahili word meaning what?

To build: creator Leslie Scott grew up speaking English and Swahili before developing the game in the 1970s.

A standard Jenga tower is built from how many wooden blocks?

A Jenga set has 54 blocks stacked in 18 storeys of three; players pull one block at a time and place it on top until the tower falls.

What is the dice-popping dome in the game Trouble called?

The Pop-O-Matic bubble rolls the die when pressed; Trouble was developed by the Kohner Brothers and first made by Irwin Toy in 1965.

Ora and Theo Coster, creators of Guess Who?, ran their Theora Design studio in which country?

The Costers ran Theora Design in Tel Aviv, Israel; Milton Bradley published Guess Who? in Britain in 1979 and took it to the United States in 1982.

Hungry Hungry Hippos, introduced in 1978, sprang from an idea by which toy inventor?

Kroll published the idea in 1967, a full eleven years before the marble-chomping hippos hit shelves.

Klaus-Jürgen Wrede's Carcassonne was first published in 2000 by which German firm?

Hans im Glück of Munich published Carcassonne in 2000 and it won the 2001 Spiel des Jahres; Rio Grande Games handled the English edition until Z-Man Games took over in 2012.

Avalon Hill's catalog advertised Diplomacy as the favourite game of which US president?

Avalon Hill touted Diplomacy as John F. Kennedy's favourite game; Henry Kissinger and Walter Cronkite were also reported as fans of Allan Calhamer's negotiation game, first sold in 1959.

Who invented Pictionary, first published in 1985?

Angel's company licensed the drawing game to Western Publishing, and graphic designer Gary Everson handled its look.

Cranium, launched in 1998, was initially sold through which coffee chain?

Starbucks stocked Cranium in its cafés from 1998, a novel route alongside Amazon; founders Whit Alexander and Richard Tait sold the company to Hasbro in 2008.

Dungeons & Dragons was first published in 1974 by which company?

Tactical Studies Rules (TSR), founded by Gary Gygax and Don Kaye in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, published the first D&D boxed set in January 1974; it grew from the fantasy supplement to Chainmail.

Dominion, the 2008 game that launched the deck-building genre, was created by whom?

Vaccarino hit on the mechanic in 2006 while working on a fantasy card game called Spirit Warriors II.

Which game won the first Spiel des Jahres award in 1979?

Hare and Tortoise (Hase und Igel), David Parlett's race game in which carrots are the currency for movement, took the inaugural Spiel des Jahres in 1979 in its Ravensburger edition.

Hasbro's name is a syllabic abbreviation of what original company name?

Henry, Hillel and Herman Hassenfeld founded the firm on 6 December 1923 in Rhode Island.

Mastermind is based on which earlier pencil-and-paper game?

Mordecai Meirowitz, a postmaster and telecoms expert, turned the old code-guessing game into pegs and holes in 1970.

Yahtzee's most important predecessor is which English dice game?

Yacht dates back to at least 1938 and is itself an English cousin of the South American game Generala.

How long do Boggle players have to find words in the 16-die grid?

Boggle's sand timer runs three minutes; Allan Turoff, a Pratt-trained industrial designer, invented it and Parker Brothers published it in 1972.

Balderdash was created in Toronto as a boxed version of which classic parlour game?

Fictionary, the parlour game of bluffing dictionary definitions, was the model; Laura Robinson and Paul Toyne replaced the unabridged dictionary with cards of obscure words and real definitions in 1984.

Uno's Merle Robbins sold the rights for $50,000 to a group led by a man in what trade?

Robert Tezak of Joliet, Illinois, ran a funeral parlor; the deal also paid Robbins 10 cents per game in royalties.

In shogi, what may a player do with an opponent's piece they have captured?

The drop rule may date to the 15th century, perhaps echoing mercenary samurai who switched sides when captured.

Dutchman Jacques Mogendorff's flag-capturing game closely copies which French game?

Hermance Edan patented L'Attaque in 1909; Mogendorff's version has been made in Europe since WWII and in the US since 1961.

Titania says 'The nine men's morris is filled up with mud' in which Shakespeare play?

Titania's line comes in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 2 Scene 1, in her speech on the disordered seasons; villagers cut nine men's morris boards into turf, so a wet summer could fill them with mud.

Monopoly's success made Charles Darrow the first game designer to become what?

Monopoly royalties made Charles Darrow the first millionaire game designer after Parker Brothers bought the game in 1935; he retired to a Pennsylvania farm to grow orchids.

HeroQuest (1989) was a Milton Bradley collaboration with which British company?

Games Workshop supplied the fantasy setting and plastic miniatures while Milton Bradley's UK designer Stephen Baker devised the dungeon-crawl system; Avalon Hill revived the game in 2021.

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 (2015) was co-designed by Matt Leacock and whom?

The board and rules change permanently after each session, an idea Daviau had pioneered in Risk Legacy.

Who designed the sprawling 2017 dungeon-crawler Gloomhaven?

Childres published it through his own Cephalofair Games after two Kickstarter campaigns.

Wingspan designer Elizabeth Hargrave charted birds she had observed in which US state?

Hargrave, a birder from Silver Spring, Maryland, built spreadsheets of the birds she watched there, pulled their statistics from biological databases and gave each a power echoing its real behaviour.

Azul, the 2018 Spiel des Jahres winner, was designed by whom?

Michael Kiesling designed Azul for Plan B Games; it won the Spiel des Jahres in 2018, and its tile-laying theme draws on the azulejos of Portuguese palaces.

Codenames, the 2016 Spiel des Jahres winner, was designed by whom?

Vlaada Chvátil, also the designer of Through the Ages and Galaxy Trucker, created Codenames; Czech Games Edition published it in 2015 as Krycí jména.

How many pieces does each player control in Blokus?

Each Blokus colour has 21 pieces, one of every free polyomino of one to five squares; Bernard Tavitian's game was released by Sekkoïa in 2000.

Rummikub inventor Ephraim Hertzano was born in which country?

Ephraim Hertzano was born in Romania and emigrated to Mandate Palestine in the 1940s; he made the first Rummikub sets in his back garden and sold them door-to-door and on consignment.

Oware is considered the national game of which Caribbean nation?

Antigua and Barbuda treat oware, known locally as warri, as their national game; it shares that status with the Ashanti of Ghana, and its Akan name is said to mean 'he/she marries'.

Chinese checkers was invented in 1892 in which country?

Ravensburger published Stern-Halma in Germany in 1892 as a star-board variant of Halma, the American square-board game of 1883; the 'Chinese' name was a 1928 American marketing invention.