Random Board Game Quiz: Let's Go Gamers!

Guess Who?

Guess Who? has been an elementary-school favorite ever since it debuted back in 1979. Thankfully, newer editions have been a bit more inclusive than that original version, which included 24 characters, only four of whom were women and only one of whom was not white.

Monopoly

Monopoly's almost universally accepted origin story is that it was invented during the Depression by Charles Darrow. However, the game was actually invented decades before by a woman named Elizabeth Magie. Her version, inspired by deeply held and progressive political views, offered two sets of rules: one pro- and the other anti-monopolist. In Magie's vision, players would discover through the game that there was only one set of rules that were morally just. Ironically, it was the pro-monopolist rules that made their way into Darrow's version — which has been teaching children around the world ever since that cash is king. Not exactly what Magie had in mind.

Polio

Candy Land was the brainchild of Eleanor Abbott, a retired school teacher who was suffering from polio. While hospitalized in San Diego during the 1940s, she created the game as a cheerful distraction for the polio-stricken children in her ward.

Swahili

Jenga was created by Leslie Scott, an Englishwoman who grew up in Tanzania during the 1970s. As a child, her family invented a stacking game using blocks from the local lumber mill. Scott honored Jenga's roots in her childhood game by choosing a name derived from a Swahili word: kugenga ("to build").

J.R.R. Tolkien

First published in 1974, the original D&D game featured a liberal helping of Tolkien-specific elements — including halflings, elves, half-elves, dwarves, orcs, rangers, balrogs, and yes, hobbits. It didn't take long for the Tolkien camp to notice... and protest. Under the threat of a costly lawsuit, the D&D creators agreed to change many character names: hobbit to 'halfling', ent to 'treant', balrog to 'balor,' etc.

Pictionary

Released in 1985, Pictionary was created by a 20-something waiter with zero toy business experience. 38 million copies and one extremely lucrative sale to Mattel later, that waiter is now a millionaire many times over.

Yeti

Why exactly is the Yeti in the Spaghetti? Beats us!

Hide and Seek

Black Box is an object hiding/searching game inspired by the work of Godfrey Hounsfield, the Nobel Prize-winning inventor of the CAT scan.

Reversi

Invented by a Brit in the late 19th century, Reversi quickly became all the rage in Victorian England. Nearly 100 years later, a Japanese man patented the game — with a slight variation to the starting setup — as Othello.

Spiritualism

Ouija was first released in the late 1800s, an era when "talking boards" were all the rage. The Civil War's devastating death toll proved a major business boon for spiritual mediums, who claimed they could facilitate communication with the dearly departed.

John F. Kennedy

Released in 1959, the strategic war game Diplomacy was a hit with the public as well as a couple of world leaders (Henry Kissinger was also a major fan). The game has a couple of other notable distinctions: it was the first commercially published game to inspire an active hobby scene with amateur fanzines and the first commercially available game to be played by mail (PBM).

Cosmic Encounter

Released in 2008, Cosmic Encounter offers endless fun for Trekkies and aspiring Masters of the Universe. The basic game set includes dozens of distinct alien races, each of which has a specific and unique power. The Masochist, for example, wins the game by losing all of its spaceships.

The Checkered Game of Life

It's hard to imagine that the vibrant-colored, American dream-chasing Game of Life was ever anything but G-rated family fun — but the original version had some seriously dark elements. Like a "Suicide" square depicting a lifeless man dangling from a tree... by a noose. Other tragic squares included "Disgrace," "Intemperance," and "Ruin."

The Creature

Set in the 25th century in the aftermath of a spaceship wreck on the mysterious planet Artemis, Not Alone pits one player (the Creature) against all the others (the Hunted).

17

Tricky one! The answer would be 16 (4 times 4), except for one thing: the "Qu" combo cube. With that boost, you can (theoretically) spell multiple 17-letter words, such as inconsequentially or sesquipedalianism (obviously).

Lexico

Years before he created Scrabble in 1938, architect Alfred Mosher Butts [yes, actual name] invented a boardless word game with cardboard letter tiles that he called Lexiko after the Greek word lexicos, meaning "of or for words." Rejected again and again by toy manufacturers, Butts was able to hawk just a few sets on his own. Back to the drawing board he went... and reemerged some time later with a board-enhanced word game called Criss-Crosswords. A decade or so later, the name was changed to Scrabble (which means to scratch or grab for something with your hands).

40

Amazing but true: Wits & Wagers has earned a whopping 40 awards, making it "history's most award-winning party game" (according to the game creators, at least).

Germany

Chinese Checkers is not only not Chinese, it's not even checkers. “Stern-Halma," as it was initially called, was invented in Germany in 1892. In 1928, the name was changed to Chinese Checkers — the brilliant idea of toy company exec Jack Pressman, who hoped to capitalize on the Asia/Middle East fever triggered by the recent discovery of King Tut's tomb.

Salvo

Before the familiar plastic version of Battleship was released in 1967 (accompanied by the ubiquitous “You sunk my battleship!” ads), the game was published under numerous other names, including Salvo, Combat, The Battleship Game, Broadsides, and Sink It.

I play

Cluedo was invented by an English musician named Anthony Ernest Pratt, who got the idea during his days playing concerts at country hotels during WWII. In addition to his own performance, the evening entertainment often included murder mystery games in which hotel guests would explore the myriad rooms in search of clues.