1Diplomacy
The Strategy board game "Diplomacy" was John F. Kennedy's and Henry Kissinger's favourite game. In the game, set in the years leading up to World War 1, each player controls the forces of a major European power, and players spend much of their time forming and betraying alliances with other players.
2. The board game Stratego was invented by a Dutch Jew for his two children during World War 2. The family was eventually sent to a concentration camp but luckily survived.
3. Anti-Monopoly is a game designed to show how hurtful monopolies can be to a free-enterprise system. The board starts off looking like a game of Monopoly had just been completed, and the aim is to return the board to the free market system.
4. In 1969, there was a commercially sold adult board game called Chug A Lug, which involved smoking, beer and marijuana, The purpose was to win the most ALCOHOLIC UNANIMOUS cards and penalties involved liquor store runs, removing clothing or not being allowed to go to the bathroom.
5. In 1909, British suffragettes released a board game called “Pank-a-Squith”. It was set out in a spiral, and players were required to lead their suffragette figure from their home to parliament, past the obstacles from hated Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and the Liberal government.
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6The Desert War
A board game named Campaign for North Africa: The Desert War 1940-43 is so detailed and complex, it can easily take 10 people over 1200 hours to finish.
7. Dungeons & Dragons creator Gary Gygax was a devout Christian who refused to celebrate Christmas because he thought it was a pagan holiday.
8. The game Yahtzee was invented by an anonymous Canadian couple, who called it The Yacht Game because they played it on their yacht. Edwin S. Lowe, the same man who introduced bingo, exchanged the rights to the game for 1000 gift sets to the couple in 1956.
9. The original name for the U.S. board game “Sorry” is “Mensch ärgere Dich nicht” translated to Man, don’t get frustrated, a nod to the game’s mechanics being random, frustrating, and not fun.
10. Since both "F's" & the only "K" occur on the same die, it is impossible to ever spell the word "F*ck" in Boggle.
11Connect Four
Connect Four is a solved game. The first player can always win by playing the right moves.
12. Chinese checkers is a German variation of an American game. It was later introduced to the Chinese by the Japanese.
13. Risk (the board game) was almost banned from being sold in Germany due to its violent "imperialist" and "militaristic" tendencies, which are highly taboo in Germany's board game culture. Developers changed the rules to allow players to "liberate" their opponents' territories.
14. The game Battleship dates back to the turn of the 20th century, where it was played with just paper and pen. The game is said to have been played by Russian officers before World War 1. A version using plastic pegs wasn't created until 1967.
15. The original Dungeons & Dragons contained references to “hobbits” but those were removed when J.R.R. Tolkien’s estate complained that he held the copyright to the creatures. They were later renamed “halflings” in D&D.
16Trivial Pursuit's 20th-Anniversary Edition
Trivial pursuit's 20th-anniversary edition has an incorrect answer to the Seinfeld related question: "in the bubble boy episode, which producer voiced the bubble boy". The answer they give is Larry David, when the answer is in fact John Hayman.
17. There is a game called Tamerlane chess which is similar to chess, with a different board and includes elephants, camels, generals, war machines, 11 types of pawns, and several other pieces.
18. The ancient board game "Go" was being played at a tournament in Hiroshima in 1945 when the atomic bomb went off only 3 miles away. Though the building was damaged and people were injured, they finished the match later that same afternoon (white won).
19. In the original version of the board game Clue, from the UK, Mr. Green is known as Reverend Green. Parker Bros. changed it for America because they thought Americans would object to a parson being a murderer.
20. Ancient Egyptians played a board game called Mehen. The rules for the game are lost but it's presumed to have been played with marbles and lion and lioness-shaped pieces.
21BP Offshore Oil Strike
In 1971, BP endorsed a board game called "BP Offshore Oil Strike" that included a game card which read, “Blow-out! Rig damaged. Oil slick clean-up costs. Pay $1million.”
22. There was a board game called Blacks and Whites that came out in 1970 which was, basically, a racist Monopoly.
23. Carrom is an extremely popular table game in South Asia with its own World Cup tournament.
24. Sorry!, Trouble, Ludo, and Parcheesi are all western versions of an old Indian game, Pachisi, that was first played in the 4th century.
25. A board game titled “Arimaa”, from 2003 uses a standard Chess set, but with rules designed such that it is hard for computers and easy for humans. By 2015 though, computers became better at the game than humans.
