Trivial Pursuit

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Trivial Pursuit
Image:Two women playing Trivial Pursuit.jpg Players answer general knowledge or popular culture questions while collecting "wedges"
Players	2–36
Age range	15 +
Setup time	5 minutes
Playing time	90 minutes
Rules complexity	Low
Strategy depth	Low
Random chance	Medium
Skills required	General knowledge, Popular culture
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Trivial Pursuit is a board game where progress is determined by a player's ability to answer general knowledge or popular culture questions. The game was developed in 1979 by Scott Abbott, a sports editor for the Canadian Press and Chris Haney, photo editor for the Montreal Gazette, after getting together to find pieces of their Scrabble game missing[1]; their game was released two years later.

In North America, the game's popularity peaked in 1984, the year over 20 million games were sold. The rights to the game were licensed to Parker Brothers (now part of Hasbro) in 1988, after initially being turned down by Richard Branson's Virgin Group. As of 2004, nearly 88 million games had been sold, in 26 countries and 17 languages.

Dozens of question sets have been released for the game. The question cards are organized into themes - for instance, in the standard "Genus" question set, questions in green are about "science and nature". Some question sets have been designed for younger players, others on a specific time period or as promotional tie-ins for pop culture (such as Star Wars, Saturday Night Live, and The Lord of the Rings movies). Most recently these tie-ins have also taken advantage of DVD technology to create Trivial Pursuit DVD TV Games.

1 Categories of questions
2 Columbo Controversy
3 History
4 See also
5 External links

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Categories of questions

Colour	Genus Edition category	Young Players Edition category	Baby Boomer edition
Blue	Geography (G)	People & Places (PP)	Television (TV)
Pink	Entertainment (E)	Good Times (GT)	Stage & Screen (SS)
Yellow	History (H)	Science & Technology (ST)	Nightly News (NN)
Brown	Art & Literature (AL)	Art & Culture (AC)	Publishing (PUB)
Green	Science & Nature (SN)	Natural World (NW)	Lives & Times (LT)
Orange	Sport & Leisure (SL)	Games & Hobbies (GH)	R.P.M. (RPM)

Note: In later editions of the game, the colour brown was replaced by purple.

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Columbo Controversy

Lt. Columbo's first name is never explicitly revealed in the Columbo TV series. When pressed, he would insist that it was "Lieutenant". Several sources cite the name "Philip Columbo", variously claiming that the name was either in the original script for Prescription: Murder or that it was visible on his police badge. Peugeot even ran an advertising campaign that mentioned "Lt. Philip Columbo" as the most famous driver of the Peugeot convertible.

The name "Philip Columbo" was, in fact, invented by Fred L. Worth, author of The Trivia Encyclopedia, who planted the information in his book (and its sequels) in an attempt to catch out anyone who might try to violate his copyright. Fred's ploy was, however, only partially successful.

In 1984 he filed a $300 million lawsuit against the distributors of the board game Trivial Pursuit, claiming that they had sourced their questions from his books; even to the point of reproducing mis-prints and typographical errors. The ace up his sleeve was "Philip Columbo", which appeared in a game question, despite the name being an invention of Fred's.

Trivial Pursuit did not deny they sourced material from Fred's books (amongst others) and submitted that copying from a single source is plagiarism, but compiling information from several sources is called research. The judge agreed, ruling in favour of Trivial Pursuit and the case was thrown out of court.

The matter of Columbo's name was finally laid to rest by the release of the first series on DVD. In the episode Dead Weight where Columbo introduces himself to General Hollister, the audience is shown a close-up of his badge, complete with the signature of "Frank Columbo".

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