Board Game History
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99 free Board Game History trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
13 free board game history trivia questions with answers. Think you know board game history? Test your knowledge with our exciting 99-question trivia quiz covering everything from ancient games to modern classics. Whether you're a casual player or a dedicated board game enthusiast, this quiz will challenge what you know about the games we love.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which ancient Egyptian board game is often cited as one of the world's oldest?
Senet
Senet boards survive from at least 3100 BCE, making it one of the earliest documented board games; sets were buried in pharaohs' tombs and the game came to symbolize the journey to the afterlife.
Q 02Which British archaeologist rediscovered the Royal Game of Ur while excavating the Royal Cemetery at Ur?
Leonard Woolley
Leonard Woolley found five gameboards at Ur between 1922 and 1934; the game, from the early third millennium BC, is one of the oldest known.
Q 03Which family of 'sowing and counting' board games takes its name from an Arabic word meaning 'to move'?
Mancala
Mancala refers to a family of strategy games played with seeds or stones and pits, with evidence of its play dating back centuries in Africa and Asia. The name itself comes from the Arabic word 'naqala,' meaning 'to move.'
Q 04The game of chess is believed to have originated from an ancient game called Chaturanga in which country?
India
India's chaturanga flourished by the 6th century; its pieces stood for the four divisions of an army, infantry, cavalry, elephants and chariots.
Q 05Which ancient Chinese board game was one of the 'Four Arts' of the cultured gentleman?
Go
Go, or weiqi, was one of the Four Arts of the Chinese scholar alongside calligraphy, painting and the guqin zither; the game has been played in China for more than 2,500 years.
Q 06Shahr-e Sukhteh, the 'Burnt City' that yielded a 5,000-year-old board game, is in which country?
Iran
Shahr-e Sukhteh in Iran's Sistan and Baluchestan province yielded a Bronze Age gaming board with dice dated to about 3000 BC, often described as the oldest backgammon-like set.
Q 07The modern board game Ludo is a simplified version of which ancient Indian cross-and-circle game?
Pachisi
Ludo simplifies Pachisi, India's cross-and-circle race game played on a cloth board with cowrie shells as dice; Mughal emperor Akbar had a life-size court at Fatehpur Sikri where people served as pieces.
Q 08Which 5x5-grid game is considered a direct ancestor of modern checkers (draughts)?
Alquerque
The 10th-century Arab scholar Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani mentions the game as Quirkat in his Book of Songs, and it reached Spain with the Moors, appearing in the 13th-century Libro de los juegos.
Q 09Monopoly descends from which game, patented by Lizzie Magie in 1904?
The Landlord's Game
The Landlord's Game had two rule sets, and the monopolist one is what modern play is mainly based on; Magie patented it in 1904.
Q 10Scrabble inventor Alfred Mosher Butts of Poughkeepsie, New York, worked as what in 1931?
Architect
Architect by day, Butts built it as a variation on Lexiko, an earlier word game of his own.
Q 11Anthony E. Pratt dreamed up Cluedo while sheltering from air raids in which English city?
Birmingham
Anthony Pratt, a Birmingham musician working in a wartime factory, devised the game at his King's Heath home; Waddingtons launched it in 1949 after his 1947 patent.
Q 12Trivial Pursuit, devised by two newspapermen in 1979, comes from which country?
Canada
Canada: Chris Haney, a photo editor at the Montreal Gazette, and Scott Abbott, a sports editor at The Canadian Press, devised the game in December 1979.
Q 13Which 1995 Klaus Teuber title was among the first Eurogames to catch on outside Europe?
Catan
Catan was published by Kosmos in 1995 as Die Siedler von Catan (The Settlers of Catan), won that year's Spiel des Jahres and became the Eurogame that broke through in North America.
Q 21In Go, what are the points added to White's score to compensate for moving second called?
Komi
Komi plus territory plus captured stones decides the winner, and the half-point it usually includes means a game can never be tied.
Q 22Who claimed the title of first universally recognised World Chess Champion in 1886?
Wilhelm Steinitz
Wilhelm Steinitz beat Johannes Zukertort in 1886 in the first match explicitly contested for the world championship, played in New York, St. Louis and New Orleans.
Q 23In 1997, which IBM computer became the first to beat a reigning world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, in a match?
Deep Blue
Deep Blue had lost to Kasparov the year before; IBM retired the machine after the rematch.
Q 14The properties on the original Monopoly board were named after locations in and around which place?
Atlantic City, New Jersey
Atlantic City, New Jersey, got there via Quaker players who renamed the streets on Lizzie Magie's earlier game to match their town.
Q 15Parker Brothers first published Monopoly in which year?
1935
Parker Brothers began selling Monopoly in 1935 after buying Charles Darrow's rights; Darrow's design patent was issued on December 31, 1935.
Q 16Elizabeth Magie designed her 1904 realty game to teach the economic ideas of which thinker?
Henry George
Georgism argues that land rents enrich owners and impoverish tenants; the game was meant to prove it.
Q 17The name of the ancient Egyptian 30-square game found in Tutankhamun's tomb literally means what?
Passing
Senet means 'passing'; the 30-square game appears in Chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead, where the deceased plays an unseen opponent, and sets were buried with Tutankhamun.
Q 18The Royal Game of Ur survived into the 1950s only among the Jewish community of which Indian city?
Kochi
They called their version 'Asha' and stopped playing when they emigrated to Israel.
Q 19Which British Museum curator reconstructed the rules of the Royal Game of Ur from a cuneiform tablet?
Irving Finkel
Irving Finkel deciphered a cuneiform rules tablet written in 177 BC by the Babylonian scribe Itti-Marduk-balatu, restoring the game's play after more than two millennia.
Q 20A 2016 International Go Federation survey found roughly how many people worldwide can play Go?
Over 46 million
Over 20 million are current players, most of them in East Asia.
Q 24What is the highest number shown on a standard backgammon doubling cube?
64
The doubling cube's six faces read 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and 64; it sits at 64 to mean a stake of 1 until the first double is offered.
Q 25The doubling cube was introduced to backgammon in which country?
America
The doubling cube appeared in America in the 1920s, reputedly in New York clubs; it lets a player propose doubling the stakes, which the opponent must accept or concede.
Q 26What did Alfred Butts call his 1938 word game before it was renamed Scrabble?
Criss-Crosswords
Butts called the 1938 version Criss-Crosswords, setting tile values by counting letter frequencies on the front page of The New York Times; James Brunot renamed it Scrabble in 1948.
Q 27How many tiles are in an English-language Scrabble set?
100
An English Scrabble set has 100 tiles: 98 lettered tiles carrying point values and two blank wild tiles.
Q 28The board of Cluedo is reputedly modelled on the Tudor Close Hotel in which English seaside town?
Rottingdean, Brighton
Rottingdean, near Brighton: the mansion layout is said to follow the Tudor Close Hotel there, a mock-Tudor hotel of the 1930s that Pratt is said to have known.
Q 29How many rooms are on the classic Cluedo board?
Nine
The classic Cluedo board has nine rooms: kitchen, ballroom, conservatory, dining room, billiard room, library, lounge, hall and study; the central space holds the solution envelope.
Q 30What did Milton Bradley's 1860 Checkered Game of Life use instead of dice, which were linked to gambling?
A six-sided top called a teetotum
It sold 45,000 copies in its first year; the modern spinner version arrived in 1960.