Trivial Pursuit

• 1. Introduction

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  Trivial Pursuit, the Canadian board game in which plastic wedges of pie stand between you and victory, was invented in 45 minutes on the back of a cigarette carton. The date was the 15th of December, 1979. The place was Montreal, Quebec. The two men responsible were Chris Haney, a photo editor at The Gazette, and Scott Abbott, a sports editor for The Canadian Press. What were they doing when the idea struck? Most accounts involve Scrabble. From that improbable scrap of cardboard, one of the best-selling board games in history would take shape. How did two journalists turn a kitchen-table idea into a game that sold 30 million copies in five years? What legal battles nearly derailed the whole enterprise? And how does a board game designed in less time than it takes to watch a film end up in a museum dedicated to play?

• 2. From Cigarette Carton to Shelves

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  Chris Haney and Scott Abbott spent 1980 researching the questions that would fill the game. Early question-writing took place in Weymouth Library in Dorset, England, where the Haney brothers were staying with family. John Haney and Ed Werner helped complete development alongside the two creators. Test marketing ran in 1981, and the game reached Canadian stores that same year. By 1982, 100,000 copies had sold in Canada. The first licensing deal went to Selchow and Righter, also in 1982. Sales crossed into the United States in 1983, and over the next five years those American shelves absorbed 30 million copies of the original version, generating retail sales of $750 million. Northern Plastics of Elroy, Wisconsin, produced 30 million games between 1983 and 1985 alone. The rights moved to Parker Brothers in 1988, and Hasbro purchased them outright in 2008 for US$80 million.

• 3. Rules of the Wheel

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  The playing board is shaped like a wheel with six spokes, and the playing pieces are round, divided into six pie-slice sections. Players roll a single die and move around the board, landing on colored spaces that correspond to one of six question categories. In the classic version, blue means Geography, pink is Entertainment, yellow is History, brown (later changed to purple) covers Art and Literature, green is Science and Nature, and orange is Sports and Leisure. At the end of each spoke sits a category headquarters space. Landing there and answering correctly earns a colored wedge, slotted directly into the playing piece like a slice of cheese. Roll Again spaces let a player move again without facing a question. The hub at the center allows a player who already holds all six wedges to answer a final question chosen by their opponents; a wrong answer sends them back out onto the board to try again.

• 4. The Copyright Trap

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  In October 1984, Fred L. Worth, the author of The Trivia Encyclopedia, Super Trivia, and Super Trivia II, filed a $300 million lawsuit against Trivial Pursuit's distributors. His central claim was that more than a quarter of the Genus Edition questions had been lifted from his books, sometimes copying typographical errors and deliberately planted misinformation. One of those traps concerned the fictional first name of the television detective Columbo. Worth had listed the name as Philip, knowing that the character was never given a first name on screen. Anyone reproducing that answer, he argued, had to have taken it from his pages. The game's inventors admitted that Worth's books were among their sources but argued that raw facts cannot be protected by copyright. The district court sided with the inventors. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld that ruling in September 1987. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case in March 1988.

• 5. A Hitchhiker's Claim

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  In 1994, David Wall of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, filed a separate lawsuit claiming that Chris Haney had driven past him and a friend while they were hitchhiking near Sydney, Nova Scotia, in the fall of 1979. Wall said he described the game idea to Haney in detail during that ride, including the shape of the playing pieces. His mother testified that she had seen drawings resembling plans for a Trivial Pursuit-like game, but those drawings had since been destroyed. The friend who was allegedly present never testified. Haney denied ever meeting Wall. The case wound through years of legal argument over whether a judge or jury should decide the matter. On the 25th of June, 2007, the Nova Scotia Supreme Court ruled against Wall.

• 6. Beyond the Board

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  A television version of Trivial Pursuit hosted by Wink Martindale aired on The Family Channel in the United States from 1993 to 1994; a pilot had been attempted in 1987 by Jay Wolpert but was not picked up. A syndicated edition called Trivial Pursuit: America Plays ran from 2008 to 2009 with Christopher Knight as host. Roger Lodge hosted a five-episode sports trivia version on ESPN in September 2004. In October 2024, a new version premiered on The CW, hosted by LeVar Burton. The Soviet Union bought the rights to produce its own version in 1989, launching an official championship for family teams whose finals aired on Soviet Central Television as the game show Lucky Case. After the licensing agreement ended in 1991, the show dropped the Trivial Pursuit elements and continued broadcasting until 2000. British software company Domark released home computer editions in the 1980s, including one called Trivial Pursuit: A New Beginning that added a plot about a dying Earth. In December 1993, Games magazine inducted Trivial Pursuit into its Games Hall of Fame, citing its "well-written, entertaining questions in a continuing flow of new categories for players of all ages and interests."

• 7. Hall of Fame

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  Games magazine had already included Trivial Pursuit in its Games 100 list every year from 1982 through 1986. By the time Hasbro acquired full ownership in 2008, more than 100 million games had been sold across 26 countries and in 17 languages. Over 100 different editions have appeared, from the Junior Edition in 1985 to licensed tie-ins for Star Wars, Saturday Night Live, and The Lord of the Rings films. An online version launched in September 2003. In 2025, the game was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong National Museum of Play, joining the small number of games recognized as genuinely enduring objects of American and Canadian culture.