Trivial Pursuit

Although board games have lost a great deal of popularity to their video counterparts, a few continue to capture the public's imagination and leisure time. Toward the end of the twentieth century, none was more successful than Trivial Pursuit.

As the name suggests, the game tests players' knowledge of obscure facts. In the basic game (known as the "Genus Edition"), the facts are divided into five categories: Art and Literature, History, Sports and Leisure, Geography, and Science and Nature. A die roll moves each player around a circular board, each square of which represents one of the five categories. Questions are contained on preprinted cards, and a player must correctly answer a question in each category to have a chance of winning. Various supplementary sets of questions may be purchased, all of which can be used with the basic board.

The game was conceived in 1979 by Chris Haney and Scott Abbott, two young journalists in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. They had a friend do the artwork for the board, borrowed money wherever they could, and finally launched the game in 1981. Initial interest among distributors was limited, and the fledgling enterprise lost money. However, the game eventually caught the attention of the Selchow and Righter Company, a major American toy-and-game manufacturer. It bought the rights, marketed the game, and by 1983 Trivial Pursuit was an undeniable success, selling three-and-a-half million units. In the next year, sales reached twenty million.

Other sets of cards followed, which allowed the manufacturer to appeal to players with different interests. The first variant was the "Silver Screen Edition," which focused on movies. It was followed by the "Baby Boomer Edition" (dealing with events since 1950) and a "Sports Edition," among others. Recent years have seen the release of the "Millennium Edition" and the "Warner Brothers Edition."

Trivial Pursuit games are now available in nineteen languages and thirty-three countries. They can also be played on the Internet (see entry under 1990s—The Way We Lived in volume 5) and in a handheld electronic version. New "editions" of the game cards are constantly under development.

—Justin Gustainis

For More Information

Bernikow, Louise. "Trivia Inc." Esquire (March 1985): pp. 116–18.

Hasbro. "The World of Trivial Pursuit." http://www.trivialpursuit.com (accessed April 1, 2002).

Silver, Marc. "The Endless Pursuit of All Things Trivial." U.S. News andWorld Report (November 6, 1989): p. 102.

Tarpey, John P. "Selchow and Righter: Playing Trivial Pursuit to the Limit." Business Week (November 26, 1984).