Board Games
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100 free Board Games trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
70 free board game trivia questions with answers. Seventy questions on the games that live in the hall cupboard and the ones that took over game night in the last twenty years. The classic board game trivia covers chess (castling, en passant, the Ruy Lopez), Monopoly's Elizabeth Magie origins and its London properties, Scrabble's original name, Clue's inventor, Go, backgammon and the Royal Game of Ur. The modern half runs through Catan, Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Pandemic, Dominion, Wingspan, Codenames and the Spiel des Jahres, with plenty of who-designed-it questions for hobby gamers. It works as a game-night warm-up or a pub quiz round. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia or the publisher's own material, and the source line sits under each question.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In London Monopoly, which property occupies the Boardwalk slot as the most expensive square?
Mayfair
Mayfair is the most expensive square in London Monopoly at £400, paired with Park Lane (£350) in the dark-blue set, taking the place of Boardwalk.
Q 02Which resource is represented by sheep in the board game Catan?
Wool
In Catan, players collect various resources to build settlements, cities, and roads. Sheep provide wool, which is used for certain building costs and trading.
Q 03How many squares are on a standard chessboard?
64
A standard chessboard is an 8x8 grid, resulting in 64 squares of alternating colors.
Q 04What is the highest-scoring letter in a standard English Scrabble set?
Q
Q and Z are the only 10-point tiles; X and J come next at 8, and the two blanks are worth nothing at all.
Q 05Sir Leonard Woolley found five boards of which ancient pastime in a Sumerian cemetery in the 1920s?
The Royal Game of Ur
The Royal Game of Ur: Woolley unearthed five boards in the Royal Cemetery at Ur, and Irving Finkel later reconstructed its rules from a Babylonian tablet dated 177 BC.
Q 06Which game won the first Spiel des Jahres, Germany's Game of the Year, in 1979?
Hare & Tortoise
Hare & Tortoise, David Parlett's race game, took the inaugural Spiel des Jahres in 1979 as Hase und Igel; Rummikub won in 1980 and Scotland Yard in 1983.
Q 07In Carcassonne, what is a follower called once it has been laid flat on a field?
Farmer
A meeple laid flat on a field is a farmer; farms score only at game end, three points for each completed city the field touches.
Q 08In Ticket to Ride, what happens at game end to destination tickets a player failed to complete?
Their points are subtracted
Their points are subtracted: each unfinished destination ticket costs its face value at game end, and kept tickets can never be discarded, so late ticket draws are a gamble.
Q 09Which continent is considered the most strategic to control early in Risk because of its defensibility?
Australia
Australia is frequently considered the best starting continent in Risk because it has only one entry point (Indonesia), making it relatively easy to defend and hold for its bonus armies.
Q 10In the cooperative board game Pandemic, what do players work together to eradicate?
Diseases
In Pandemic, players take on roles with unique abilities and work as a team to treat infections and discover cures for four deadly diseases threatening the world.
Q 11From which country does the ancient strategy board game Go originate?
China
Go is an ancient abstract strategy board game that originated in China over 2,500 years ago, where it is known as Weiqi.
Q 12Which German publisher first released Catan in 1995?
Kosmos
Kosmos (Franckh-Kosmos) of Stuttgart published Catan in 1995, the year it won the Spiel des Jahres; the house dates back to 1822 and launched the Exit escape-room series in 2016.
Q 13Which 2014 Marc André game has players collecting gem chips as Renaissance merchants?
Splendor
Splendor (2014), designed by Marc André and published by Space Cowboys, has players grabbing gem chips to buy development cards; it was nominated for the 2014 Spiel des Jahres.
Q 21Which designer created Spirit Island, the 2017 cooperative game in which players are spirits defending an island from colonising invaders?
R. Eric Reuss
R. Eric Reuss designed Spirit Island, published by Greater than Games in 2017, a euro-style cooperative game played from the island's side of the story.
Q 22Which game designer created the whimsical board game Takenoko, featuring a panda and bamboo gardens?
Antoine Bauza
Antoine Bauza, a French game designer, is known for creating Takenoko, as well as other popular games like 7 Wonders and Hanabi.
Q 23Who co-designed the Kickstarter-funded winemaking game Viticulture with Alan Stone?
Jamey Stegmaier
Q 14Which chess piece can move any number of squares diagonally, horizontally, or vertically?
Queen
The Queen is the most powerful piece on the chessboard, combining the moves of both the Rook (horizontal and vertical) and the Bishop (diagonal), allowing it to move any number of unobstructed squares in any direction.
Q 15What breed of dog is represented by the dog token in Monopoly?
Scottish Terrier
The iconic dog token in Monopoly is a Scottish Terrier, often affectionately called a Scottie.
Q 16Dungeons & Dragons is often credited with popularizing which type of die?
D20 (twenty-sided)
Dungeons & Dragons famously uses a variety of polyhedral dice, but the D20 (twenty-sided die) is central to its gameplay for resolving most actions, attacks, and skill checks.
Q 17In the cooperative card game Hanabi, how do players hold their hands?
Outward, visible only to others
The fireworks-themed game won the 2013 Spiel des Jahres, and the whole challenge is telling teammates what they are holding.
Q 18Which 2019 game by Elizabeth Hargrave has players attracting birds to their wildlife preserves?
Wingspan
Wingspan (2019) by Elizabeth Hargrave, an amateur birder, has players collecting 170 North American bird cards, each with a power drawn from real field data.
Q 19Who illustrated the dreamlike cards of the original Dixit?
Marie Cardouat
Marie Cardouat painted the 84 cards of the original 2008 Dixit; later expansions used other artists such as Xavier Collette and Naïade, which is why each box has its own visual mood.
Q 20In chess, what special move shifts the king two squares towards a rook, which then jumps to the square the king crossed?
Castling
Castling is a unique chess move that involves both the king and a rook. It's the only move where two pieces move simultaneously, aiming to protect the king and activate the rook.
Jamey Stegmaier co-designed Viticulture with Alan Stone; its 2012 Kickstarter raised about $65,000 and launched Stonemaier Games, a name blended from Stone and Stegmaier.
Q 24Which game designer is credited with creating the imaginative card-based game Dixit?
Jean-Louis Roubira
Jean-Louis Roubira created Dixit, a game of storytelling and imagination where players interpret dreamlike images. It won the Spiel des Jahres award in 2010.
Q 25Which 1904 Elizabeth Magie creation did Parker Brothers later publish in modified form as Monopoly?
The Landlord's Game
The Landlord's Game, patented by Magie in 1904, was built to teach Henry George's single-tax economics and show how rent enriches landlords; Parker Brothers bought her patent in 1935.
Q 26In Catan, rolling a seven forces the active player to move which piece?
The robber
The robber blocks its new hex from producing anything; the mover also steals a card from a neighbour, and anyone holding more than seven cards discards half.
Q 27In which country is the game of chess widely believed to have originated?
India
The earliest form of chess, known as Chaturanga, is thought to have originated in India around the 6th century CE, before spreading to Persia and then the rest of the world.
Q 28In the original Ticket to Ride, how many bonus points go to the player with the longest continuous route?
10
The Longest Continuous Path bonus is worth 10 points, awarded at game end to the player, or every player tied, with the longest unbroken chain of their own trains.
Q 29Alfred Butts' word game carried which name immediately before James Brunot renamed it Scrabble in 1948?
Criss-Crosswords
Criss-Crosswords was Butts's name from 1938, after his earlier Lexiko; James Brunot bought the rights and trademarked it as Scrabble in 1948, a word meaning to scratch frantically.
Q 30By what name is the game of Go known in Korea?
Baduk
Baduk is the Korean name for Go, most likely built from Korean roots meaning field and stone; the Japanese say igo and the Chinese weiqi.