15 questions · Games & Comics
Board games are older than writing. Game boards have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs, people in Persia were rolling dice for pieces thousands of years ago, and the Indian chaturanga travelled through Persia and Arabia to become chess, still regarded as the supreme test of thinking. Older still is the Chinese game of Go, in which black and white stones surround territory and which has more possible positions than there are atoms in the universe. In the 20th century board games conquered living rooms. Monopoly was originally meant as a warning against landlords and became the epitome of capitalism, Scrabble was invented by an unemployed architect, and Cluedo was born in an air-raid shelter. A French filmmaker created Risk, two Canadians invented Trivial Pursuit because their game was missing pieces, and Stratego, Mastermind and Jenga brought bluffing, logic and steady hands to the table. Since the 1990s Germany has been a board game nation. Catan, formerly The Settlers of Catan, made German games famous worldwide in 1995, and Carcassonne followed in 2001 with its tiles and little wooden meeples. Alongside them the old classics live on: nine men’s morris, checkers and backgammon have been played with the same rules for centuries. Can you recognise the great board games by their history and rules?
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Monopoly
Parker Brothers released it in 1935; a game meant to criticise monopolies became the epitome of capitalism.
💡 Did you know? The street names of the original version come from Atlantic City.
Catan
It won Germany’s Spiel des Jahres in 1995 and made German board games famous worldwide.
💡 Did you know? Until 2015 its German title was “Die Siedler von Catan”.
Scrabble
Unemployed architect Alfred Butts invented it in the 1930s, counting letters in newspapers to set the values.
💡 Did you know? Each language edition has its own letter values and number of tiles.
Chess
“Mate” comes from the Persian “shah mat”, the king is helpless.
💡 Did you know? In 1997 IBM’s computer Deep Blue beat world champion Garry Kasparov in a match.
Go
It is more than 2,500 years old and has more possible positions than there are atoms in the universe.
💡 Did you know? In 2016 the program AlphaGo beat top player Lee Sedol, years earlier than experts had expected.
Risk
The original was called “La Conquête du monde”, the conquest of the world.
💡 Did you know? Lamorisse also made the award-winning short film “The Red Balloon”.
Cluedo
Briton Anthony Pratt invented it during air raids in the Second World War.
💡 Did you know? In North America it is simply called “Clue”.
Stratego
The marshal beats everyone but falls to the spy if the spy attacks first.
💡 Did you know? The modern version came from the Netherlands in the 1940s.
Trivial Pursuit
Chris Haney and Scott Abbott launched it in 1981; it became a mass phenomenon in the 1980s.
💡 Did you know? Six colours stand for six subject areas.
Backgammon
Its ancestors were already played in ancient Persia.
💡 Did you know? The doubling cube lets players raise the stakes during a game.
Checkers
A piece that reaches the opponent’s back row is crowned with a second piece and may move further.
💡 Did you know? In 2007 researchers proved that the English variant ends in a draw with perfect play.
Carcassonne
Klaus-Jürgen Wrede designed it; it won the Spiel des Jahres in 2001.
💡 Did you know? The little wooden figures are called “meeples”.
Mill
Boards for it were carved into ancient stones, for example on the roof of a temple at Qurna in Egypt.
💡 Did you know? A piece that shuttles between two rows, closing one each time, creates a “double mill”.
Mastermind
Israeli postmaster Mordecai Meirowitz invented it around 1970.
💡 Did you know? Mathematicians proved that any code in the classic version can be cracked in at most five guesses.
Jenga
Briton Leslie Scott invented it; the name comes from Swahili and means “build”.
💡 Did you know? A standard tower has 54 blocks in 18 layers.
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