Trivial Pursuit / Jeopardy

Which Is Dominant?

My grandparent’s house had four games: Scrabble, Stratego, A deck of cards, and Trivial Pursuit. During the last week of my junior year of High School, our class played Trivial Pursuit in two teams — us vs our History Teacher. Amusingly, one of the questions he got had an answer that he’d gone over repeatedly in class …. and the Trivial Pursuit game was wrong.

Seinfeld made that joke a decade later, with “The Moops.”

Trivial Pursuit was a thing.

Trivial Pursuit Genus Edition. Photo by BGG User ‘MeepleMaven’.

Trivia quizzes were all over TV since the 40s, and TV versions of quiz shows were nothing new. Scott Abbott and Chris Haney’s Trivial Pursuit didn’t really add much new to the quiz show format, and certainly added little in the way of board game. It’s a roll and move, in the pejorative sense of the word that modern gamers use with a sneer. (At least you can pick a direction). You land on a spot and answer a question in one of six categories. Answer correctly? Get another turn.

Some spaces are hubs, and if you answer that question you get to add a cool wedge to your playing piece.

The Green Player is not having a good night. Photo by BGG User ‘CaydenCatelyn’

If the game play was little more than a pub quiz tacked onto … well, any old game at least the pieces and aesthetics were delightful. Playing with your “cheese wheel” and spare pieces gave you something to do when your history teacher was answering a dozen questions in a row. You could debate why Trivial Pursuit became a pop culture hit; but it definitely did.

After a slow rollout in Canada (where Abbott and Haney were journalists), selling a mere 100,000 copies or so, Trivial Pursuit hit the U.S. in ‘83 and went pre-Internet viral, selling 30 million copies in five years and firmly latching itself into the public’s consciousness.

They even made a TV game show — with Wink Martindale as host. The circle of trivia had returned back from whence it started. In my mind, Trivial Pursuit was a ten- or twenty-year fad, but it is still basically the name in trivia board games, with editions for major movie franchises (like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or Star Wars), or catering to a certain decade or generation (including junior editions).

As a game … well, Trivia Games mostly have the notorious problem that a know it all can usually run the table, leaving not much enjoyment for everyone else, and Trivial Pursuit is no exception. The main strategy is to know a bunch of stuff. Which is fine; people like showing off their knowledge … or playing with the pieces.

Trivial Pursuits flaw’s are Jeopardy’s Strengths. As a game, Merv Griffin’s TV show works much better. There is no random roll-and-move, and while three people are up there supposedly answering questions, millions of people (and families) can play along at the same time.

Or you can buy the board game.

The Board Game based on the TV Show. Photo by Patrick Carroll

Jeopardy is so dominant than whenever you play almost any quiz game, someone invariably phrases their answer in the form of a question, just in case Alex Trebeck or Art Fleming or Ken Jennings is listening. It’s a cultural watershed that when someone has a huge score or goes on a record-breaking streak, it makes national news. It’s almost unfair to consider Jeopardy a game …. it’s a TV show. But also a game, one that millions of people play at home for thirty minutes every weekday (or more, in syndication). And if their only prize is self-satisfaction (or moans and slaps to their own forehead) well, that’s the only prize I get in most games I play.

Neither Jeopardy nor Trivial Pursuit seem destined to be forgotten soon, and either (or both) could make reasonable entry into The 100 Most Influential Games of the 20th Century … the pub quiz (which itself really gained steam into the 70s) could also be a candidate. Should it be One? Both? Neither?

Now those are hard questions.