100 Fun Facts About Board Games

In London Monopoly, which property occupies the Boardwalk slot as the most expensive square?

Mayfair is the most expensive square in London Monopoly at £400, paired with Park Lane (£350) in the dark-blue set, taking the place of Boardwalk.

Which resource is represented by sheep in the board game Catan?

In Catan, players collect various resources to build settlements, cities, and roads. Sheep provide wool, which is used for certain building costs and trading.

How many squares are on a standard chessboard?

A standard chessboard is an 8x8 grid, resulting in 64 squares of alternating colors.

What is the highest-scoring letter in a standard English Scrabble set?

Q and Z are the only 10-point tiles; X and J come next at 8, and the two blanks are worth nothing at all.

Sir Leonard Woolley found five boards of which ancient pastime in a Sumerian cemetery in the 1920s?

The Royal Game of Ur: Woolley unearthed five boards in the Royal Cemetery at Ur, and Irving Finkel later reconstructed its rules from a Babylonian tablet dated 177 BC.

Which game won the first Spiel des Jahres, Germany's Game of the Year, in 1979?

Hare & Tortoise, David Parlett's race game, took the inaugural Spiel des Jahres in 1979 as Hase und Igel; Rummikub won in 1980 and Scotland Yard in 1983.

In Carcassonne, what is a follower called once it has been laid flat on a field?

A meeple laid flat on a field is a farmer; farms score only at game end, three points for each completed city the field touches.

In Ticket to Ride, what happens at game end to destination tickets a player failed to complete?

Their points are subtracted: each unfinished destination ticket costs its face value at game end, and kept tickets can never be discarded, so late ticket draws are a gamble.

Which continent is considered the most strategic to control early in Risk because of its defensibility?

Australia is frequently considered the best starting continent in Risk because it has only one entry point (Indonesia), making it relatively easy to defend and hold for its bonus armies.

In the cooperative board game Pandemic, what do players work together to eradicate?

In Pandemic, players take on roles with unique abilities and work as a team to treat infections and discover cures for four deadly diseases threatening the world.

From which country does the ancient strategy board game Go originate?

Go is an ancient abstract strategy board game that originated in China over 2,500 years ago, where it is known as Weiqi.

Which German publisher first released Catan in 1995?

Kosmos (Franckh-Kosmos) of Stuttgart published Catan in 1995, the year it won the Spiel des Jahres; the house dates back to 1822 and launched the Exit escape-room series in 2016.

Which 2014 Marc André game has players collecting gem chips as Renaissance merchants?

Splendor (2014), designed by Marc André and published by Space Cowboys, has players grabbing gem chips to buy development cards; it was nominated for the 2014 Spiel des Jahres.

Which chess piece can move any number of squares diagonally, horizontally, or vertically?

The Queen is the most powerful piece on the chessboard, combining the moves of both the Rook (horizontal and vertical) and the Bishop (diagonal), allowing it to move any number of unobstructed squares in any direction.

What breed of dog is represented by the dog token in Monopoly?

The iconic dog token in Monopoly is a Scottish Terrier, often affectionately called a Scottie.

Dungeons & Dragons is often credited with popularizing which type of die?

Dungeons & Dragons famously uses a variety of polyhedral dice, but the D20 (twenty-sided die) is central to its gameplay for resolving most actions, attacks, and skill checks.

In the cooperative card game Hanabi, how do players hold their hands?

The fireworks-themed game won the 2013 Spiel des Jahres, and the whole challenge is telling teammates what they are holding.

Which 2019 game by Elizabeth Hargrave has players attracting birds to their wildlife preserves?

Wingspan (2019) by Elizabeth Hargrave, an amateur birder, has players collecting 170 North American bird cards, each with a power drawn from real field data.

Who illustrated the dreamlike cards of the original Dixit?

Marie Cardouat painted the 84 cards of the original 2008 Dixit; later expansions used other artists such as Xavier Collette and Naïade, which is why each box has its own visual mood.

In chess, what special move shifts the king two squares towards a rook, which then jumps to the square the king crossed?

Castling is a unique chess move that involves both the king and a rook. It's the only move where two pieces move simultaneously, aiming to protect the king and activate the rook.

Which designer created Spirit Island, the 2017 cooperative game in which players are spirits defending an island from colonising invaders?

R. Eric Reuss designed Spirit Island, published by Greater than Games in 2017, a euro-style cooperative game played from the island's side of the story.

Which game designer created the whimsical board game Takenoko, featuring a panda and bamboo gardens?

Antoine Bauza, a French game designer, is known for creating Takenoko, as well as other popular games like 7 Wonders and Hanabi.

Who co-designed the Kickstarter-funded winemaking game Viticulture with Alan Stone?

Jamey Stegmaier co-designed Viticulture with Alan Stone; its 2012 Kickstarter raised about $65,000 and launched Stonemaier Games, a name blended from Stone and Stegmaier.

Which game designer is credited with creating the imaginative card-based game Dixit?

Jean-Louis Roubira created Dixit, a game of storytelling and imagination where players interpret dreamlike images. It won the Spiel des Jahres award in 2010.

Which 1904 Elizabeth Magie creation did Parker Brothers later publish in modified form as Monopoly?

The Landlord's Game, patented by Magie in 1904, was built to teach Henry George's single-tax economics and show how rent enriches landlords; Parker Brothers bought her patent in 1935.

In Catan, rolling a seven forces the active player to move which piece?

The robber blocks its new hex from producing anything; the mover also steals a card from a neighbour, and anyone holding more than seven cards discards half.

In which country is the game of chess widely believed to have originated?

The earliest form of chess, known as Chaturanga, is thought to have originated in India around the 6th century CE, before spreading to Persia and then the rest of the world.

In the original Ticket to Ride, how many bonus points go to the player with the longest continuous route?

The Longest Continuous Path bonus is worth 10 points, awarded at game end to the player, or every player tied, with the longest unbroken chain of their own trains.

Alfred Butts' word game carried which name immediately before James Brunot renamed it Scrabble in 1948?

Criss-Crosswords was Butts's name from 1938, after his earlier Lexiko; James Brunot bought the rights and trademarked it as Scrabble in 1948, a word meaning to scratch frantically.

By what name is the game of Go known in Korea?

Baduk is the Korean name for Go, most likely built from Korean roots meaning field and stone; the Japanese say igo and the Chinese weiqi.

Which French film director, an Oscar winner for The Red Balloon, invented Risk?

Albert Lamorisse released it in France in 1957 as La Conquête du Monde; Parker Brothers brought it to America as Risk in 1959.

In which Matt Leacock cooperative game do players grab four treasures before the map floods?

Forbidden Island's team must also make it back to Fools' Landing to escape by helicopter, or everyone loses; Gamewright published it in 2010.

In 2011 the German Game of the Year jury created a separate prize for more complex games under what name?

Kennerspiel des Jahres, Kenner meaning connoisseur, was added in 2011 for more complex games, with 7 Wonders as its first winner; the Kinderspiel des Jahres had existed since 2001.

How many pawns does each player start with in a standard game of chess?

Each side starts with sixteen pieces, half of them pawns lined up along the second rank.

Anthony E. Pratt's 1943 deduction game, sold as Clue in North America, was originally named what?

Pratt called his game Murder! when he devised it in 1943; Waddingtons renamed it Cluedo, a pun on clue and ludo, Latin for I play, and published it in 1949.

Which German designer created the tile-laying game Carcassonne, the 2001 Spiel des Jahres winner?

Wrede, from Meschede in North Rhine-Westphalia, also designed The Downfall of Pompeii.

The earliest record of backgammon itself dates to the 17th century in which country?

England: the name backgammon is first recorded there in the mid-17th century, and its equipment matches far older tables games, which is why the game is so often wrongly called thousands of years old.

Which German designer created the farming-heavy strategy games Agricola, Caverna and A Feast for Odin?

Uwe Rosenberg's first hit was the bean-trading card game Bohnanza in 1997, a decade before Agricola (2007); Caverna followed in 2013 and A Feast for Odin in 2016.

Which Andreas Seyfarth Euro-game has players developing plantations and shipping goods as colonial governors?

Puerto Rico, published in 2002, is known for its "role selection" or "variable phase order" mechanic, where players choose roles that grant actions and privileges to all players.

Which chess opening begins 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5?

Named for a 16th-century Spanish priest, it is nicknamed the Spanish Torture for how hard Black finds equality.

In Dixit, in which situation does the storyteller score nothing for the round?

When everyone or no one guesses right the storyteller scores nothing and every other player takes two points; the trick is a clue vague enough to fool some of the table but not all of it.

Which mechanic has players place limited tokens on action spaces, blocking rivals from using them?

Worker placement, where each token set on an action space locks that space to rivals, was popularised by Caylus in 2005 and became a staple in Agricola and Stone Age.

In what year was the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons published?

Dungeons & Dragons, often abbreviated as D&D, was first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules (TSR), marking the beginning of modern role-playing games.

Which cooperative dungeon-crawl board game by Isaac Childres uses a persistent world and card-based combat?

Gloomhaven is a critically acclaimed campaign-based dungeon crawl game where players work together through branching scenarios, managing their actions through an innovative card system.

In chess, the knight is the only piece able to do what?

The knight is the only piece that can jump over other pieces, which is why it is such a nuisance in cramped positions where bishops and rooks are boxed in.

Who is the designer of the popular railway-themed board game series, Ticket to Ride?

Moon had already won the Spiel des Jahres in 1998 for Elfenland, six years before Ticket to Ride took the same prize.

Which Vlaada Chvátil party game has two teams identifying their secret agents from one-word spymaster clues?

Codenames, released in 2015, is a popular word association game where spymasters give single-word clues to guide their teammates to their team's words on a grid, while avoiding the opponent's words and an assassin.

Who designed the influential board game Catan, first published in 1995?

Teuber had already won three Spiel des Jahres awards before Catan brought him a fourth in 1995.

Which 19th-century tile game, often compared to rummy, is usually played with 144 tiles?

Mahjong, developed in China in the 19th century, is played with 144 tiles: suits of bamboos, characters and circles, plus winds, dragons and eight bonus tiles.

What is the chess capture a pawn may make only right after an enemy pawn's two-square advance called?

En passant stops a pawn from using its double step to slip past an enemy pawn that could otherwise have taken it.

Which 2008 card game by Donald X. Vaccarino pioneered the deck-building mechanic?

Dominion is a landmark game where players build their deck as they play, acquiring new cards to strengthen their hand and ultimately score victory points.

Which luck-driven mechanic sends a piece along a track in Monopoly, Ludo and Snakes & Ladders?

Roll-and-move is a classic and often luck-driven mechanic found in many traditional board games like Monopoly, Snakes & Ladders, and The Game of Life.

Which style of design sparked the hobby's mid-1990s 'board game renaissance'?

Eurogames, or German-style games, were already big at home; Catan in 1995 carried the genre abroad and set off a global boom in designer board games.

Which 2016 Stonemaier game set in an alternate 1920s Europa blends engine-building, area control and mechs?

Scythe (2016), from Stonemaier Games, is set in Jakub Różalski's alternate-1920s Europa of mechs and farmers; that setting later inspired Iron Harvest, a 2020 real-time strategy video game.

What is the standard grid size for a traditional Go board, often used for competitive play?

While smaller boards like 9x9 and 13x13 are used for beginners or quicker games, the standard and most common size for a Go board is a 19x19 grid.

What chess term describes a drawn position where the player to move has no legal moves but is not in check?

A stalemate occurs when a player is not in check but cannot make any legal move, immediately ending the game in a draw, even if one side has a significant material advantage.

The original 2004 Ticket to Ride, set in the year 1900, covers which region?

United States and Southern Canada: the 2004 original is set in 1900 and its board runs from Vancouver and Seattle across to Boston and Miami; a Europe edition followed in 2005.

Which Jacob Fryxelius board game has players making the Red Planet habitable?

Terraforming Mars, published in 2016, is an engine-building game where corporations work to raise temperature, increase oxygen, and create oceans on Mars, while competing for victory points.

In chess, what is it called when a king is in check with no legal move to escape?

Checkmate is the ultimate goal in chess, occurring when the king is attacked and has no possible escape, immediately ending the game in victory for the player delivering the checkmate.

What shape are the resource-bearing terrain tiles in the board game Catan?

Catan is well-known for its modular board made up of hexagonal tiles, each representing a different resource, which contributes to the game's high replayability.

Which Michael Kiesling board game has players draft and place tiles to create mosaic patterns?

Azul is Portuguese for 'blue' and takes its inspiration from Portugal's azulejos tiles; Plan B Games released it in 2017.

What is the term for a board game whose components, rules and story change permanently across sessions?

A legacy game changes permanently between plays; Rob Daviau's Risk Legacy (2011) introduced the format, with players tearing up cards and writing on the board for good.

Who designed the dice game King of Tokyo, in which giant monsters battle for control of Tokyo?

Richard Garfield, also known as the creator of Magic: The Gathering, designed King of Tokyo, a fast-paced game where players roll custom dice to attack, heal, gain energy, or earn victory points.

Which digital sandbox lets players push virtual pieces around under a physics engine to play almost any board game?

Tabletop Simulator, released on Steam by Berserk Games in 2015, has no built-in victory conditions; it simulates a physics table and leaves the rules to the humans.

For its 20th anniversary in 2015, Catan's rebrand dropped which words from the game's title?

The Settlers of was dropped in 2015, leaving the title as plain Catan; the German original was Die Siedler von Catan, first published in 1995.

In chess, what is promoting a pawn to a knight, rook or bishop rather than a queen called?

Underpromotion usually means a knight, whose jumping move can create threats no other piece can; promoting to a queen is called queening.

Which company is the primary publisher of the popular Ticket to Ride series of board games?

Days of Wonder sold 250,000 copies within nine months of the 2004 launch and later added digital editions and card games.

Which online database and forum is the main community hub for tabletop gaming enthusiasts?

BoardGameGeek, launched in 2000, is considered the definitive online resource for board games, offering a vast user-generated database with reviews, images, forums, and a ranked list of games.

Which 4th-century BCE text holds the earliest written reference to the game of Go?

The Zuo Zhuan, an annal compiled around the 4th century BCE, mentions the game, then called yì, while recounting an event of 548 BCE.

In chess, which side is reckoned to hold a small edge from moving first?

White, moving first, holds a real but small edge, scoring roughly 55% in master play; theorists agree it is not enough to force a win with perfect play.

Trivial Pursuit was dreamed up in 1979 by two journalists in which Canadian city?

Montreal: Chris Haney of the Montreal Gazette and Scott Abbott of The Canadian Press sketched the game out there in about 45 minutes on 15 December 1979.

Jenga takes its name from a verb meaning 'to build' in which language?

Swahili: jenga means 'build'; designer Leslie Scott grew up speaking it in Tanganyika, now Tanzania, and the tower starts with 54 blocks.

Eleanor Abbott designed Candy Land in 1948 while recovering from which disease?

Polio: Abbott, a San Diego schoolteacher, devised Candy Land in a polio ward in 1948 and gave the children there a game needing no reading; Milton Bradley published it in 1949.

What was the title of Milton Bradley's 1860 debut, his company's first-ever release?

The Checkered Game of Life sent players from Infancy to Happy Old Age across a checkerboard with a Suicide square; in 1960 it was reworked into the spinner-and-cars Game of Life.

Twister took off in 1966 after Eva Gabor played it on air with which talk-show host?

Johnny Carson played it with Eva Gabor on The Tonight Show in May 1966; the game had been developed under the name Pretzel before Milton Bradley renamed it Twister.

John Spinello sold his Operation prototype to Marvin Glass in 1964 for how much?

$500 was all Spinello received for Operation, along with a promised job at Marvin Glass that never came; Milton Bradley published the game in 1965.

In Stratego, which piece is the only one that can capture the Marshal by attacking it?

The Spy, the lowest-ranked piece, captures the Marshal only when it attacks; if the Marshal or anything else strikes it first, the Spy loses.

Goro Hasegawa, who patented Othello in 1971, was working as what at the time?

Hasegawa was a pharmaceutical-company salesman when he patented Othello in 1971; Tsukuda Original released it in 1973 and he founded the Japan Othello Association that year.

When Connect Four was solved in 1988, what did the analysis show about perfect play?

The first player can force a win by starting in the centre column; James Dow Allen and Victor Allis reached the result independently in October 1988, about two weeks apart.

Guess Who? was first released in 1979 as Wie is het? in which language?

Israeli inventors Ora and Theo Coster of Theora Design created it; Milton Bradley carried it to Britain and then to the US in 1982.

Which IBM computer beat world champion Garry Kasparov in a 1997 rematch in New York?

Deep Blue won the rematch 3½–2½ after Kasparov had beaten it in Philadelphia a year earlier; the loss became the documentary Game Over.

Which 9-dan Go professional lost 4-1 to DeepMind's AlphaGo in March 2016?

Lee Sedol's single win came in game four, when his wedge at move 78 was hailed as a 'divine move' the program had not foreseen; AlphaGo took the Seoul series 4–1.

Mordecai Meirowitz, who invented Mastermind in 1970, had what day job?

Meirowitz was a postmaster and telecommunications expert; major toy companies turned Mastermind down before a small English firm, Invicta Plastics of Leicester, picked it up.

Which seven-player game of alliances and betrayal in 1901 Europe uses no dice at all?

Diplomacy: Allan Calhamer paid for the first 500-copy print run himself in 1959 after publishers rejected it; orders are written secretly and resolved without dice.

The tile game Rummikub became the best-selling export game of which country?

Israel: Romanian-born Ephraim Hertzano hand-made the first Rummikub sets with his family in his backyard after settling there in the 1940s, and sold them door to door.

The original US Monopoly board names its properties after streets in and around where?

Atlantic City, New Jersey: Boardwalk, Park Place and the rest are its streets, and Marvin Gardens is a misspelling of the real Marven Gardens that has survived on the board for decades.

In WWII, what did British intelligence have Waddingtons hide in Monopoly sets for POWs?

Silk escape maps went in alongside real money, a compass and a file, sent through fake POW relief charities; Waddingtons was chosen because it could print on silk.

In North American Scrabble, what is a play using all seven rack tiles called?

A bingo earns a 50-point bonus on top of the word's score; outside North America the same seven-tile play is simply called a bonus.

In backgammon, what is the die marked 2 to 64 that players use to raise the stakes called?

The doubling cube, faced 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and 64, first appeared in the 1920s among gaming clubs on New York's Lower East Side.

Which Cluedo suspect traditionally had the advantage of moving first?

Miss Scarlett, the red piece, traditionally moved first in Cluedo; she was one of the six original suspects when Waddingtons published the game in 1949.

How many territories make up the world map on a standard Risk board?

They are grouped into six continents, and the current edition links them with 83 attack routes.

Which 2015 card game co-created by The Oatmeal drew a record 219,382 Kickstarter backers?

Exploding Kittens asked for $10,000 and closed with about $8.78 million in pledges from 219,382 backers, at the time the most backers of any Kickstarter project.

Gen Con takes its name from which Wisconsin town, where Gary Gygax first held it in 1968?

Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, Gygax's home town, hosted the first Gen Con in 1968 as a wargames convention, years before Dungeons & Dragons; the show moved to Indianapolis in 2003.

Which Bruno Cathala tile game of 5x5 realms won the 2017 Spiel des Jahres?

Kingdomino: at least one half of each domino must touch matching terrain or your castle inside a 5x5 realm, and a full game takes about 15 minutes.

Which 2005 GMT Games title has the US and USSR fighting the Cold War with event cards?

Twilight Struggle, by Ananda Gupta and Jason Matthews, topped the hobby's rankings for about five years from 2010 until Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 displaced it.

Friedemann Friese's Power Grid is sold in its native German market under what name?

Funkenschlag was Friese's 2001 original, with no fixed map: players drew their power networks onto the board with crayons before the 2004 redesign became Power Grid abroad.

In shogi, what may a player do with pieces they have captured from the opponent?

One theory ties the rule to 15th-century mercenary samurai who switched sides when captured; it also makes shogi far more complex than chess.

Sid Sackson's 1964 hotel-merger game from 3M's bookshelf series is called what?

Sackson had pitched it as Vacation; 3M suggested the new name, and it is the only bookshelf game still in print in the US.

The standard chess set design, first sold by Jaques of London in 1849, is named for whom?

Howard Staunton, the leading English master of the day, endorsed the design and hand-signed the first 500 sets; it was registered in 1849 under the name of Nathaniel Cooke.

What was the real secret of the Turk, the chess-playing 'automaton' first shown in 1770?

A human master hidden inside worked the Turk, which Wolfgang von Kempelen built in 1770 to impress Empress Maria Theresa; it went on to beat Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin.