The strange history of board games

Today's most popular games looked totally different from when they were first invented

They are the classic board games that you grew up playing - but many of them have a secret past. Games like Monopoly and Scrabble have a history as surprising and entertaining as playing the games themselves. Who knew that The Game of Life was originally a British board game called The Mansion of Happiness? Or that chess led one player to become so paranoid he thought the Russians were poisoning his orange juice? Here are the stories behind some of the most well-known games.

Monopoly

Monopoly was originally designed to warn players about the dangers of capitalism - but it ended up celebrating getting rich. The first version of the board game was called 'The Landlord's Game' and was supposed to show the unfairness of private property ownership.

It was created in 1902 by Elizabeth Magie who believed in fairer taxation and wanted a single tax on land ownership to replace all other taxes. She thought it was grossly unfair that landlords raked in profits by passively owning land and wanted to change it.

The board game she called ' The Landlord's Game' was essentially a satire and she thought that when people played it they would 'see clearly the gross injustice of our present land system' How wrong she was. In her original version players used paper money to buy utilities and property, just like the modern game. But instead of passing 'Go' and collecting $200, you passed a square marked ' Labor upon Mother Earth produces wages' and got $100.

One corner of the board was marked ' No Trespassing. Go to Jail' which she said was owned by a British lord and was to signify ' foreign ownership of American soil'. Magie patented The Landlord's Game in 1904 and approached board game makersed Parker Bros., but they passed, saying it was too complicated. In time Magie forgot about it.

Meanwhile the game spread around the country until it found its way to Charles Darrow in Philadelphia in 1933. He was shown the game by his friend Charles Todd and promptly stole the idea and passed it off as his own, adding some more colour to the board and suggesting people use small household objects as playing tokens.

During the 1930s it began to sell steadily at stores like F.A.O. Schwarz until in 1935 Parker Brothers decided to buy it from Darrow. Parker Brothers added playing pieces like a shoe, a top hat and an iron, the Chance and Community Chest cards and a cartoon character who was called Mr. Monopoly, which spawned the game's new name. Parker Brothers tried to patent the game but realised that Darrow did not actually own it.

Author Tristan Donovan writes: 'Players looked at Monopoly and decided they wanted to be the rich monopolistic landlord. ' After all, who wants to be bankrupt? Much better to be the one doing the bankrupting. If winning the game meant bleeding your opponents dry so be it'.

The game of life

The Game of Life was originally a British board game called The Mansion of Happiness. The rules were simple but fiendishly addictive - players rolled a dice and moved around a spiral, being sent back to the bottom by special squares.

It was reimagined as the ' Checkered Game of Life' in the 1860s by Milton Bradley, a devout Methodist Episcopal from Springfield, Massachusetts who intended it to have a religious message. The good special squares like Perseverance led to Success and Industry led to Wealth. But the vice squares were the opposite and Gambling led you to Ruin and Idleness resulted in Disgrace. Worst of all was the suicide square which eliminated you from the game and featured a 'chilling illustration of a man dangling from a noose tied to a tree branch', the book says.

Bradley began selling it in New York and his Milton Bradley Company grew quickly but by the end of the 19th century ithe game seemed out of date and was eventually discontinued. It was rediscovered in 1959 by Reuben Klamer, a toy manufacturer who had come up with the hula hoop. He found the Game of Checkered Life in the Milton Bradley archives and reworked it to become the Game Of Life which removed the religious message and replaced it with getting rich. Losers ended up on the Poor Farm which in real life catered to people who had gone bankrupt, the homeless or the insane. During the 1990s the game removed the idea that you have a job for life, reflecting the changing times.

Twister

In 1965 the Milton Bradley Company discontinued Twister even though it had just been released because Sears Roebuck, then the biggest retailer in America, said it was too dangerous. The game's creator Reyn Guyer was crushed but there was not much he could do.

The release of Twister coincided with the beginning of the Sexual Revolution and it was still frowned upon to get too close to a member of the opposite sex. Twister, which Guyer had originally called 'King's Footsie', was a little ahead of the curve - until the following year when it appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Carson played a game with the glamorous actress Eva Gabor and after millions of people saw them getting tangled up with one another Milton Bradley could barely keep up with demand. The company was accused of offering 'sex in a box', but the floodgates had opened.

Scrabble

Scrabble was originally called 'Lexiko' and was inspired by an Edgar Allen Poe story about a man who finds gold after decrypting a message written in code. Alfred Butts, a draftsman who lost his job in the stock market crash of 1929, thought the part in The Gold Bug about letter distribution in the English language might be an idea for a game. He spent weeks pouring through newspapers to work out how frequently words were used.

This allowed him to work out how many of each letter he should include in the game which was also part inspired by crossword puzzles. Butts later dubbed it Criss- Cross Words before it became Scrabble in 1948. The game was an instant hit, apparently because Jack Strauss, the chairman of Macy's, had played it on vacation and wanted it in his stores.

Chess

The most paranoid chess player in the history of the game was Bobby Fischer, the American chess wizard who became the US champion at the age of 14 in 1958. He also found himself at the center of the Cold War which was being played out in the world of chess, which was dominated by the Soviets.

His paranoia set in during the 1972 showdown with then world champion Boris Spassky at the Icelandic capital Reykjavik which became a proxy for the wider East vs West conflict. With so much national pride at stake, Fischer thought that the KGB might try to assassinate him or put something in his food. He feared he could be hypnotised and demanded his orange juice be squeezed in front of him.

Fischer won and at subsequent tournaments he kept his juice in a locked suitcase to stop Communist agents tampering with it. Before his death in 2008 he even got his dental fillings removed because he thought the Russians could use them to control his thoughts.

Settlers of Catan

One of the most successful games of modern times is Settlers of Catan, a strategy game that some see as having reintroduced board games to a new gen- eration. Launched in 1995 in Germany as Die Siedler von Catan, it has sold 22 million copies worldwide even though games routinely last for five hours.

Catan came about thanks to a change in German healthcare policies which nearly bankrupted its creator Klaus Teuber. Teuber was a dentist and the changes meant his practice was going broke so he poured himself into creating board games in his spare time. Catan was based on his love of Viking history but focusing on trade and not the raping and pillaging.

With no conflict at all - players succeed by trading with others - it struck a chord in Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the late 2000s it was adopted by tech entrepreneurs LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Mozilla chief executive John Lilly.

Facebook hosted Catan parties for its staff and executives swapped golf courses for board games. The game later appeared on TV shows Parks and Recreation and South Park, cementing its place in popular culture.

(© The Daily Mail, London)