Roll the Dice With This History of Board Games Quiz

The island of Catan is the setting for the popular board game where three to four players compete to build the strongest, most advanced settlements. The game uses a pair of six-sided dice, and if a player rolls a seven, they get to steal resource cards from other players to speed up their own build. Risk, Splendor, and Game of Thrones are all games played without the use of dice.

Available Scrabble tiles in a normal game include only one “z” and two blanks, so words like “razzmatazz” and “pizzazz” are impossible to play, even if they are officially recognized in the Scrabble dictionary. Also, due to the length of the board, 15 letters is the maximum length for a playable word, which eliminates other legitimate words such as “absentmindedness” and “counterbalancing.”

The sci-fi franchise “Battlestar Galactica” has been a TV show, a movie, and a popular board game. A central conflict in every version of the game is trying to figure out who is a human, and who is a Cylon. Cylons can appear virtually identical to humans, but they are actually a race of machines that are at war with humankind.

Parcheesi is a hugely popular board game that originated in India, where it is known as “Pachisi” and is sometimes called the country's national game. U.S. gamemakers Selchow and Righter purchased the rights for Pachisi in 1867 and trademarked the name “Parcheesi” soon afterward. Whatever it’s called, the game remains popular across the globe.

John Spinello, an electrical engineering student at the University of Illinois, created the uniquely named game the Box That Sparked and Made Noise as a class project in 1962. He later sold the game for $500 to people who renamed it Operation, and made a lot more money than that. With the central character of “Cavity Sam,” the game forces players to maintain a steady hand while they remove problems such as “Writer’s Cramp,” “Water on the Knee,” and “Butterflies in the Stomach.” (Clearly, this was not designed by a med school student).

In 1860, Milton Bradley was a 23-year-old with an idea for a game that represented both the good and bad sides of life, in equal measures. He produced the Checkered Game of Life on an actual checkerboard, with half of the squares representing good fortune, and half bad luck. Bravery, Cupid, and Gambling are all represented on the board, along with maybe the most confusing square: Fat Office.

Invented in 1998, Cranium is a massively successful board game with deep roots in 1990s Seattle. Not only was it the first game ever sold at Starbucks stores, but its creators were executives and software developers at Seattle-based Microsoft before leaving to create Cranium, Inc. “The Game for Your Whole Brain” (as it’s billed) has four categories catered to different skill sets: Creative Cat, Star Performer, Data Head, and Word Worm.

The ancient Indian game of Snakes and Ladders is suspected to date all the way back to the 2nd century BCE. This version was supposed to be a metaphor for life itself, since getting ahead and falling back represented the natural way that destiny, karma, chance, and desire play into life.

The Checkered Game of Life, later shortened to The Game of Life, dates back to 1860. The original package was small enough to easily carry around, and Civil War soldiers reportedly loved playing the game to pass the time.

The game we know as RISK was created by the French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse during a family vacation to Holland. The game was originally called La Conquête du Monde (The Conquest of the World) and was released in 1957. Parker Brothers bought the game in 1959, added some mechanisms, and renamed it RISK.

Ouija was invented in 1890 by a businessman named Elijah Bond. While a lot of people assume that the name means "yes" — since “Ouija” is a combination of “Oui” (French) and “Ja" (German) — it's not as simple as that. Apparently, when the makers asked the board game what it wanted to be called, the board spelled out "Ouija." When they asked what the name meant, it spelled out, “Good luck.”

A political cartoonist named F.O. Alexander was responsible for all of the original illustrations on the Monopoly board game. The game’s Officer Mallory character had his hands full with Jake the Jailbird, but really he should have arrested the Parker Brothers, because Alexander was never paid for his creations. He also illustrated the Monopoly mascot, the mustachioed and top-hatted Rich Uncle Milburn Pennybags.

As noted in an earlier question, Parcheesi, also known as Pachisi, is sometimes referred to as India's national game. It involves rolling dice to see which team can be the first to move their players across a cross-shaped board. Sorry!, invented in 1929, is a Westernized version of the game that follows many of the same rules.

If you just add an exclamation point, a few Beatles songs share a name with board games, including Money! and Revolution! and the popular board game based on train travel, Ticket to Ride. There is also a Beatles-themed board game called Flip Your Wig, where players have to collect four cards of the same Beatle to win.

While Charles Darrow is often credited with inventing Monopoly, the game was actually created decades earlier by a woman named Elizabeth Magie. In 1903, Magie filed a legal claim as the creator of what she called the Landlord’s Game, three decades before Darrow and Parker Brothers added Boardwalk and Park Place to the board and made millions. She designed the game in protest of actual American monopolists such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.

In 1965, Reyn Guyer was working for an ad firm when he came up with a board game that used people instead of pieces. The idea came to him as he was trying to think of a fun way for people to use their feet as a promo offer to sell shoe polish. And thus the sensational game Twister was born.

It only took an hour for IBM supercomputer Deep Blue to beat chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, then considered the greatest chess player in history. Kasparov initially played Deep Blue in 1996 and defeated the computer by switching strategies mid-game. In 1997 he was more cautious, and resigned 19 moves into the final game of his match against the machine, saying, “I lost my fighting spirit.”

The weapons in the diversely dangerous game of Clue are as follows: revolver, dagger, lead pipe, rope, candlestick, and wrench. The characters who maybe did or maybe didn’t use one of these weapons in their mysterious mansion murder are Mrs. White (in recent games, replaced by Dr. Orchid), Mrs. Peacock, Professor Plum, Colonel Mustard, Miss Scarlett, Reverend Green, and Mr. Boddy.

Atlantic City, New Jersey was the inspiration for the places on the original Monopoly board, and the city’s famously ritzy boardwalk inspired the most expensive property. When the game was adapted for other countries, the “Boardwalk” space took the name of local famous streets, such as Madrid’s Paseo del Prado for the Spanish version.

The ancient Egyptian game senet is the oldest known board game in the world — dating back back at least to around 3500 BCE; it has been found in tombs from that period. In the 20th century, two researchers pooled all the existing textual mentions of senet and developed a gameplay that is close to the original rules. This modern adaptation is still played by contemporary senet players.