25 Surprising Facts About Board Games You Didn't Know

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What’s your favorite board game? For centuries, board games have done more than just bring people together - they’ve broken living room tables, ended friendships, and even made history. And that’s just the good parts! From the oldest games ever discovered... to that other oldest game ever discovered, and all the sneaky tricks hidden in the rules, Here are 25 Surprising Facts About Board Games You Didn’t Know

Author: Hestie Benard
Music: Rainy Day Games - The Green Orbs

Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
0:23 - The Game With the Oldest Surviving Rules
1:00 - The Hungry Hippos Had Names
1:36 - That Hidden Game
2:09 - Battleship Began as a Pencil-and-Paper Game
3:05 - Scrabble’s Highest-Scoring Word Is a Mouthful
3:43 - The Grim Origins of The Game of Life
4:27 - The Oldest Game Still Played Today
5:02 - Clue’s Lead Pipes Were Made of Real Lead
5:30 - Monopoly’s Financially Indestructible Bank
5:53 - Trivial Pursuit’s Plagiarism Scandal
6:47 - Boggle’s Family-Friendly Design
7:26 - Stealing From Retirees
8:01 - Scrabble Lets You Twerk Your Way to Victory
8:32 - Not Everyone Wins in Jenga
9:12 - The Aztec Take on Board Games
9:50 - There’s a $2 Million Monopoly Set
10:29 - The Viking Game of Strategy
11:07 - Before Monopoly, There Was The Landlord’s Game
11:58 - The Spiritual Origins of Snakes and Ladders
12:36 - The Pharaoh of Board Games
13:14 - The World’s Oldest Game?
13:54 - Chaupat and Pachisi
14:31 - Operation’s Sneaky Specialist Rule
15:10 - The Game That Outpaced Its Creator
15:39 - A Universe of Moves
Learn something new every day.
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Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research

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[OzeriusBlackwood]

My science teacher used to use Jenga as a test prep. He split the class into 2 groups, and asked 1 side a question. If the person got the question wrong they had to play, but if they got it right they got the option to play or pass to the other side of the room and they had to play. Whichever side caused the tower to crash, everyone on the other side got 10 bonus points on the test. I fondly remember the time I got a question right and my team was begging me to pass, but I said play because I had been eyeing the perfect move for 10 minutes. The next person on the other team got their question wrong and they barely touched a piece before it collapsed.

[dhaucoin]

Pacheesi was my family tradition, and no quarter was asked or given.
The last game I played was in 2007, with four generations sitting around the table: my Gram, Mom, myself, and my teenage son. My youngest son, barely a year old, sat in my mom's lap. She taught him how to hold and roll the dice. Well one, anyway, as his hand was too small to grab both, ha ha!
Logan passed later that year, and Mom put a die in his hand as a remembrance.
Both Mom and Logan are gone now, but rather than sadness, I always smile at the memories of that final race around the board.

[swoesteban]

RISK was one of my faves when I was younger.
Growing up in the 60s and 70s, we had a stack of over a dozen games that our mother would play with us.
Along with the Atari 2600.

[woofer]

I'm 76 but used to play board games almost every day. I definitely can't pick out one favorite- but these are the ones that I loved playing- Boggle (no one could beat me), Labyrinth, Backgammon, Chess, Risk, and Clue.

[suzannehawkins]

im an old Canadian. my dad was in the Army and we lived in Germany from 1959-1962. We did a lot of car travelling/camping during that time. Dad made a battleships game to entertain us three kids in the car for hours. A clipboard with lined paper. Over that was a piece of wax paper like paper upon which we put the checkmarks with a dull pencil when our boats were hit. When a game was done, we simply pulled back the waxed paper which cleared the markings and it was ready for the next game. it was like magic when they finally made a real game of it! lol

[jason-uk]

Merry Christmas Mike have a great 2025 thx for all the great content

[Lifeinbelize]

My sister and I play “Aggravation “. It’s played on a wooden board with different color marbles.

[justajo]

My two brothers and I spent many happy hours in the mid nineteen fifties playing Battleship. We called it "Sink a Ship" and what was great about it was exactly as he said: you only needed a couple sheets of paper and two pencils. The words "clunk" and "glub" have a special meaning to me.

[kenvaughan]

I remember a game called MASTER MINDS,
It came out I think in 1976.
My 7th grade math teacher loved it and challenged any students to play it with him.
Naturally, I passed.

[CrystalKStearns]

My favorite growing up was Dark Tower. It was one of the first board games that had a computerized component. This tall Dark Tower would sit in the middle with various keys for different spaces. As you would take your turn you would hit one of these buttons. Sometimes you would find treasure in a tomb or ruin, buy things at the bazaar, or have ro fight brigands. This little primitive computer from the 1980s kept track of it all. Then after making your way around all 4 countries and receiving the gold, silver and bronze keys, you would have to fight the large band of brigands at the Tower. The first one to make it all the way one. You could play 1 to 4 people and it had an option for you to play against the Tower computer if you were alone, which most of the time I was. I still have mine today.

[TheOmniaNerd]

Childhood favorites: that same electronic Battleship you showed in the video. I played it with my father all the time. He always beat me and I think back now and am pretty sure he could see my pieces. I’d give anything for one more game with him. I also loved Dark Tower because I could play it solo. War of the Networks was a favorite too. Players are heads of TV networks trying to put together the most successful lineup of programming.

Current favorites are: Acquire, Dune Imperium, Western Legends, and Star Wars Outer Rim. There are plenty of other current favorites that are too numerous to mention. I might add that Return To Dark Tower is phenomenal and STILL works as a great solo game when no other players are available.

[garystein]

My favorite board game is an odd one: Phalanx, by Whitman. A strategy game with flat, differently-shaped pieces that represent various factions of an ancient army. The goal is to capture all opponent pieces by making contact with 2 sides of each piece

[groermaik]

I taught all of my kids, grandkids and now some great grandkids mancala as soon as they could put beans in the board. It's still a keeper at Christmastime.

[jozimoto]

We, senior citizens, played Caton last night in Clearwater.

[robinwebb]

An appropriate video for the season 😊 Our family have always enjoyed playing board games. Growing up, we received a new game every Christmas. Clue and
Strategy my were my favorites 🙂

[cubhuhi]

Risk has always been my favorite. I had always wanted to see a version with ships though. My favorite version of Clue was Master Detective with the extra rooms, suspects and weapons. I wish they would remake it maybe add a lavatory and bedrooms they could even have a smaller board for other floors using stair cases like the secret passages.
Have fun gaming all.

[joannewilson]

During the pandemic, I bought a bunch of board games and my kids and I had a lot of fun playing them. I bought battleship, Rocco, and clue master detective, which is like clue kicked up a few notches. We already had Monopoly, Life, and Scattergories… we played those games all the time. My daughters have moved out but every time we get together, we still end up playing some sort of game at the very end of the day. And all those games I bought during the pandemic are still chilling in my basement.❤️❤️

[laurabailey]

I used to play Boggle during lunch hour with my high school biology teacher. We both won and Mrs Smyth was proud when I beat her.
My mum and I used to play scrabble and boggle together but we changed the rules with no word smaller than three letters, sometimes it was four letter words in scrabble. We also used to play Chinese checkers and I hardly ever won.

[SPAnComCat]

G'Day, Mike!

And Happy Holidays!