THE GAME
About Trivial Pursuit
Almost everyone has heard of it. If you're one of the people who hasn't played it, or just wants to know what the fuss was about, here is the game in brief.
WHAT IT IS
A general-knowledge board game that became one of the best-selling games ever made.
Trivial Pursuit is a board game in which players move around a board and answer trivia questions across six categories. Created in Canada in 1979 and first sold in 1981, it has gone on to sell more than 100 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling board games in history and the most successful game ever to come out of Canada.
![Three of the Trivial Pursuit creators [John Haney, Scott Abbott, Chris Haney] playing an early edition of the game in the early 1980s.](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a73a93329d8760bfcb542b5/777a064a-bc28-4a09-bc94-2aa7964e9778/trivial-pursuit-creators-1980s-national-post.jpeg)
How it’s played
The game rewards broad general knowledge rather than any single expertise, which is why it works so well with family and friends.
Move and answer
Players roll a die, move around the board, and answer a question each time they land on a space.
Six categories
Questions span six subjects, from geography and history to science, sports, entertainment, and the arts.
Collect and win
Earn a token from every category, then answer one final question correctly to win the game.
Where it came from
Trivial Pursuit was created in 1979 by four friends: Chris Haney, Scott Abbott, John Haney, and Ed Werner. The idea began one December night in Montreal, when Chris and Scott, frustrated over a missing Scrabble set, wondered whether they could invent a game of their own. The four went on to build it together, forming a company called Horn Abbot Ltd., writing thousands of questions by hand, and releasing the first edition, known as the Genus Edition.
Why it became a phenomenon
Trivial Pursuit arrived at the start of the 1980s and became a sensation almost overnight. It tapped into something simple and social: the pleasure of knowing things, and of playing against friends and family across a mix of subjects.
It sold two million copies in 1983 and twenty million the year after, spawned countless imitators, and helped launch a wave of trivia games that continues today.
BY THE NUMBERS
100M+
COPIES SOLD
20
LANGUAGES
1979
CREATED IN CANADA
No.1
CANADIAN GAME
EVER MADE
Its place in pop culture
Over four decades, Trivial Pursuit has become a fixture of living rooms and holidays around the world. It has been published in dozens of countries and around 20 languages and released in countless themed editions. Now owned by Hasbro, it remains one of the most recognizable board games in the world.
That is the game.
The rest is the story.
How four people actually made it, against long odds and with a great deal of luck, is the subject of John Haney's memoir, My Trivial Pursuits.