You’ll nev e r b e a g a in
BORED of festive telly and feeling as stuffed as a turkey? Then it’s time to gather friends and family around and unpack a board game. Old favourites such as Monopoly, Scrabble and Cluedo have been entertaining people for generations and their appeal continues even in the digital age.
Word-game Scrabble celebrated its 70 anniversary last year and at least 150 million sets have been produced in more than 120 countries since it went on sale in 1938.
It is reckoned more than half the homes in the UK have Scrabble on their shelves and there are around 276,000 words that can be used on the board.
But the family favourite almost failed to get off the starting block... twice. Unemployed architect Alfred Butts invented the game, which he called Lexiko, in New York at the height of the Great Depression in America in 1933.
Players drew wooden letter tiles and tried to make seven letter words from them. There was no interest from companies in his game so he ended up making sets in his kitchen and releasing them himself. He sold fewer than 100 in the first year.
He went back to the drawing board, renamed the game Criss Cross Words and relaunched it, but sales were just as bad.
He eventually sold the rights to federal government worker James Brunot after the Second World War. Brunot tweaked the board and rules and changed the name to Scrabble. Sales remained low and he was ready to throw in the towel when an unexpected order for 2,500 copies arrived from Macy’s department store in New York and was followed by an even larger order the following week.
Store chairman Jack Strauss had played the game on holiday and enjoyed it and, by 1953, two million copies of Scrabble had been sold.
This and other stories are revealed by board game experts Ian Livingstone and James Wallis in their book Board Games in 100 Moves – 8,000 Years Of Play, which charts everything from Ancient Egyptian favourite Senet and chess from India to Trivial Pursuit, Pictonary or 60s Christmas must Mousetrap.
Ian says: “I never tire of trying new games and have more than 1,000 in my collection.”
The book tells how party game Twister – originally called Pretzel – also had a rocky start. Milton Bradley Games changed the name to Twister but stockists were worried about the game’s potentially controversial and risqué reputation. It looked like the end for the game when retail giant Sears Roebuck passed on including it in its Christmas range. TV adverts were cancelled and copies pulled from stores but a marketing company had landed the game a spot on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
The popular chat show host was seen playing Twister with glamorous
Johnny Carson and Eva Gabor made Twister ‘respectable’
Hollywood actress Eva Gabor on the American TV show in 1966 and the next day all copies of the game sold out in New York.
By the end of the year, the company was manufacturing 40,000 a day to keep up with demand.
James Bond actor Sean Connery was pictured showing American film star Lana Turner how to play dominoes in 1957 on the set of the film Another Time, Another Place.
Dominoes dates back to around 1150 and is the first and most famous of the tile-placing games.
Chess comes from India and developed from the sixth century game of Chaturanga. The Persians took to the game calling it Shatranj and introducing their own modifications. The earliest written references to chess in Europe date back to 997.
Game favourite Monopoly helped make domestic heater salesman Charles Darrow a millionaire but his other game, Bulls And Bears, in 1936 was not a success.
Monopoly developed from The Landlord’s Game created by American stenographer
Elizabeth Magie in 1903. Charles Darrow later developed his own version and it launched in 1935. Within a year, it was selling 20,000 copies a week.
Trivial Pursuit was the brainchild of journalists Chris Haney and Scott Abbott after they discovered they could not play Scrabble because some tiles were missing from their set so invented a trivia game instead.
They self-published it in 1981, but lost money so eventually sold the rights to Selchow & Righter. They relaunched it in 1983 and turned it into a global success.
And, if you are looking for a fun trivia fact, a staggering 30 million copies had been sold by 1985.