How To Win At Board Games Trivia Quiz

Answer: Mouse Trap

"Mouse Trap" was first released in 1963. Players move mouse-shaped tokens around the board, building an amusing and elaborate three-dimensional mousetrap as they go. In the original game, the game ends when all but one of the mice have been trapped by the device, which is activated when a player lands on a particular space.

More recent versions have slightly different rules, and minor tweaks have been made in the contraption, but the concept of the game remains the same.

Answer: Scrabble

The original "Scrabble" game was devised in 1938 by an American architect named Alfred Butts, although it was not sold under that name until ten years later. During the 1950s it became extremely popular and began to be sold all around the world. In the original version, players draw random letters from a bag containing 100 tiles and attempt to make words on a 15x15 square crossword-style grid. Each letter has a score, with common letters like "A" and "T" scoring 1, up to 10 for "Q" and "Z".

These scores are subtly different in non-English versions, according to the differing popularity of the letters in other languages.

Answer: Cluedo/Clue

The games of "Cluedo" (known as "Clue" in North America) was invented during WWII by English musician Anthony E Pratt and first appeared in the shops in 1949. The game board is the ground plan of a traditional English country house with nine rooms, in one of which a murder is purported to have taken place, and players move around this via dice throw.

The aim of the game is to successfully identify, by a process of elimination, the murderer, weapon and crime scene, which are drawn from a pack of cards before the game and placed in an envelope in the middle of the board.

Answer: Go

"Go" is a game for two players which is believed to have been devised in China over 2500 years ago and has remained little changed since then. It is usually played on a 19x19 grid, with 181 black and 180 white playing pieces, or "stones". Players take turns to place their stones one-by-one on the board, with the aim of surrounding their opponent's stones and removing them from the board.

The usual rules state that when all stones have been played, the player who has occupied or surrounded the largest area is declared the winner.

Answer: Monopoly

"Monopoly" is one of the most popular board games to be devised in the 20th century, and numerous different versions exist around the world. The game as we know it today was devised in the 1930s by Charles Darrow, although the concept was based on an earlier one called "The Landlord's Game" which was first marketed in 1906. Players move around a board buying up properties (streets, railway stations and utilities) with the aim of owning as many as possible, thus creating a "monopoly". Players can enhance the value of their streets by building houses and hotels on them, and extract "rent" from the other players if they land on them, up to the point when all but one player has run out of money and properties. That player is declared the winner.

Answer: Trivial Pursuit

"Trivial Pursuit" was devised by two Canadian journalists, Chris Haney and Scott Abbott, and released in 1981. Players have to answer general knowledge questions in six categories, which in the original version are Geography, Entertainment, History, Arts & Literature, Science & Nature, and Sports & Leisure.

Some squares entitle the player to take a cheese-shaped wedge of a colour associated with that category, which slot into the player's game-piece. Once all six coloured wedges have been collected, the player has the chance to answer one last question in a category selected by the other players. If this is answered correctly, they are declared the winner.

Many, many other games based on answering "trivia" questions followed, but "Trivial Pursuit" is generally credited with popularising the genre.

Answer: Operation

"Operation" first came onto the market in 1965, having been devised the year before by a student named John Spinello, who unwisely sold the rights to the game for $500. The concept is simple and requires players to take it in turns to try to remove objects from cavities in a cartoon figure of a human being, using a pair of tweezers. If the tweezers touch the metal sides of the body cavity, this completes an electrical circuit which sounds a buzzer and lights up a red bulb that forms the patient's nose, meaning the player has failed.

Answer: Pictionary

"Pictionary" first appeared in the shops in 1985. The basis of the game is for players to work out what is being drawn by a member of their team within a time limit. There are different categories, including "person/place/animal", "object", "action" and "difficult".

While drawing skills helps, more important is an ability to convey the essence of an object or idea as quickly and simply as possible. The game was "devised" by Robert Angel, although people had undoubtedly been playing impromptu versions of the game for many years previously.

Answer: Risk

The original version of "Risk" was devised in 1957 by the French film director Albert Lamorisse (best known for "The Red Balloon") and released in France as "La Conquête du Monde" ("The Conquest of the World"). In 1959 it was released internationally by Parker Brothers as "Risk: The Continental Game".

The game is played on a board representing a world map, and players compete to conqueror as many as possible of the 42 territories into which it is divided. Whoever successfully occupies all 42, eliminating the other players, is the winner.

Answer: Backgammon

The origins of "Backgammon" are literally lost in the mists of time, although archaeological evidence suggests that similar games were being playing in ancient Mesopotamia around 5000 years ago. It is a game for two players, each of whom has fifteen game pieces.

These pieces are moved around the board according to random dice throws, although there is considerable skill in deciding which pieces should be moved to maximum advantage. The winner is the player who moves all their fifteen pieces off the board first.