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Trivial Pursuit

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Trivial Pursuit
File:Two women playing Trivial Pursuit.jpg
Two women playing Trivial Pursuit.
Player answer general knowledge or popular culture questions while collecting "wedges"
Players2–36
Setup time5 minutes
Playing time90 minutes
ChanceLow
Age range15 +
SkillsGeneral knowledge, Popular culture

Trivial Pursuit is a board game where progress is determined by a player's ability to answer general knowledge or popular culture questions. Scott Abbott, a sports editor for the Canadian Press and Chris Haney, photo editor for the Montreal Gazette, developed the concept in December 1979; their game was released two years later.

In North America, the game's popularity peaked in 1984, the year over 20 million games were sold. The rights to the game were licensed to Parker Brothers (now part of Hasbro) in 1988. As of 2004, nearly 88 million games had been sold, in 26 countries and 17 languages.

Dozens of question sets have been released for the game. The question cards are organized into themes - for instance, in the standard "Genus" question set, questions in green are about "science and nature". Some question sets have been designed for younger players, others on a specific time period or as promotional tie-ins for pop culture (such as Star Wars, Saturday Night Live, and The Lord of the Rings movies). Most recently these tie-ins have also taken advantage of DVD technology to create Trivial Pursuit DVD TV Games.

The board and the rules

The game board consists of squares arranged in a six-spoked wheel shape. Each square is coloured in a systematic pattern, with one special square of each colour located at the connection of the "wheel" with each spoke respectively.

The players start in the "hub" of the wheel. The players in turn roll the die and move their tokens in the direction of their choice the number of squares indicated by the die. Once the die lands, another player draws a card from a large collection (supplied with the game or sold separately) and asks the rolling player a trivia question on the card corresponding to the colour. If the player answers correctly, he or she can roll again. If the square is one of the special squares located at an intersection, the player is also awarded a "scoring wedge", "pie", or "cheese" representing the colour of the square, if they do not already possess that colour of pie. If the player answers incorrectly, play passes to the next player in sequence.

The game continues until a player has collected pies of all six colours, then moves his or her marker back to the hub, at which point the other players select one colour and read the question from the corresponding category; the player must answer this final question correctly to win the game. If the player does not do so, the game continues until that player, or another player with all six colour tokens, moves to the hub square and answers a question of the chosen category correctly.

The game can also be a team game where several players are represented by a piece and their unanimous answer to the trivia question is deliberated upon.

Columbo Controversy

Lt. Columbo's first name is never explicitly revealed in the Columbo TV series. When pressed, he would insist that it was "Lieutenant". Several sources cite the name "Philip Columbo", variously claiming that the name was either in the original script for Prescription: Murder or that it was visible on his police badge. Peugeot even ran an advertising campaign that mentioned "Lt. Philip Columbo" as the most famous driver of the Peugeot convertible.

The name "Philip Columbo" was, in fact, invented by Fred L. Worth, author of The Trivia Encyclopedia, who planted the information in his book (and its sequels) in an attempt to catch out anyone who might try to violate his copyright. Fred's ploy was, however, only partially successful.

In 1984 he filed a $300 million lawsuit against the distributers of the board game Trivial Pursuit, claiming that they had sourced their questions from his books; even to the point of reproducing mis-prints and typographical errors. The ace up his sleeve was "Philip Columbo", which appeared in a game question, despite the name being an invention of Fred's.

Trivial Pursuit did not deny they sourced material from Fred's books (amongst others) and submitted that copying from a single source is plagiarism, but compiling information from several sources is called research. The judge agreed, ruling in favour of Trivial Pursuit and the case was thrown out of court.

The matter of Columbo's name was finally laid to rest by the release of the first series on DVD. In the episode Dead Weight where Columbo introduces himself to General Hollister, the audience is shown a close-up of his badge, complete with the signature of "Frank Columbo".

History

See also: The History of Trivial Pursuit, (About.com)

See also

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