Good Job, Brain! - 22: DO NOT PASS GO

Episode Date: July 30, 2012

Breaking bulletin, boardgame buffs! Facts and origin stories of our favorite classic boardgames: Monopoly, Scrabble, and Trivial Pursuit. Boardgames modification quiz, the importance of Monopoly "house rules", and we venture back into a bit of Star Wars trivia. Also: a VERY special 80's version Pop Quiz, Hot Shot!, how to memorize the Bill of Rights, and we announce the winner of our Singing Robot naming contest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hello, crazily crafty cranial cream puffs. Welcome to Good Job Brain, your weekly quiz show and Offi trivia podcast. This is episode 22. And of course, I'm your humble host, Karen. And we are your four fresh facts. Finding Fulios and Flusi. Hey.

Speak for yourself, my friend. You're slandering some people here. First were cranial cream puffs. No, those are our listeners. I'd rather be a cream puff. I'm Colin. I'm Dana. And I'm Chris.

First, we just want to start off the show with a little bit of follow-up on something we mentioned in episode 20. Long-time listeners of the show will know that we have a segment where sometimes we will have a computerized voice. robot voice and intentionally in the 80s, 90s, era, computerized robot voice sing opening lines to popular songs.

Sing, I guess, is one way to describe. Yes, sing in a very monotone robot voice. And we wanted you guys to name them. Because, yeah, he doesn't have a name. Otherwise, we have to go through the whole spiel that I just went through, which is not very poetic. And since he's an 80s robot, we wanted something that was an acronym. Yeah. So,

I mean, you know, we thought about, you know, maybe if the acronym was like brain or possibly Brian. Right, right. And And there are always those forced, awkward acronyms. Like Knight Rider, right? Kit. Yes, yes. The Knight Industries 2000.

Yes, with a separate tea for each one. We got a lot of good suggestions that we narrowed down. Yeah, thank you guys. Thank you to everyone who sent something in. Ultimately, the one that just had just stood out to us the best was not a Brian or a brain. It is Elvis, which stands for electronic lyric vocalization interface system, which is so perfectly overwrought. I think it's fantastic I mean I think it just goes really well

It sounds like something real you know Yeah and it personalizes it You can imagine like you know we're the team Of teenage crime fighters hey Elvis we need help with So a big thank you to Leland Jory Who sent that in Leland well done Elvis

Dude does Elvis have anything to say about this And Elvis absolutely has something to say about it So you know Elvis Elvis loves first lines of songs So Elvis really feels Elvis and I were chatting Back with backstage, he felt the opening line from this particular diddy really summed it up the best. Oh, victory speech.

It must have been cold there in my shadow to never have sunlight on your face. You were content to let me shine. That's your way. Oh, Elvis. So if you have not been able to identify, that is the opening stanza from Wind Beneath my Wins. By Bet Midler. Oh, thanks, Elvis. A heartlandition.

We'll be hearing more. more from Elvis in a future episode, I'm sure. Well, let's do this. Let's jump into our general trivia segment. Pop Quiz Hot Shot. And we have exciting news, and this is, we're all very excited. We're like on the edge of our seats. You know, we've been doing this show for, what, more than 20 episodes now, and you may

recall that I'm always complaining about the trivial pursuit cards that I randomly, you know, select for this segment. And so we're going to switch things up. Recently, all four of us went to an old. tiny soda fountain for lunch or brunch, and they sold these packs of vintage collectible cards, like, kind of like garbage-pail cards. Yeah, yeah. The cards with the gum and the little wax paper package.

And they have trivia battle game cards. By tops. By tops. It's in wax paper. It's right here in front of me. Sealed. And it's from 1984. Yep.

Nice. So it's advertised to have over 1,500 questions in series 1. In each pack, there are nine cards, one sticker. and one stick of bubble gum. If my math is right, that means this piece of gum is 28 years old. Yes, yes. Chris said he was going to eat it. Well, I said I was going to eat it, but then I thought maybe just the loser should eat the gum.

I think the loser seems appropriate. The loser has to eat the gum. I do not agree to these things. Unless I win, and then it's fine. Colin and I, who does worse, I'm in, you know, win or lose. I'm in to sample the gum. Totally, yeah. So this is sealed.

I'm going to open it right now. Hope you can hear the... And while Karen opens this, I just... Yeah, I mean, one of the things that really tickles us is not only do we have to try to answer these questions, but we have to remember, this is from a 1984 mindset. So anything about politics or movie hits or things like that, we have to pretend... All right, well, there is our piece of gum. It's still pink.

It hasn't dissolved. Pick a trivial battle card here. So what do they look like here? Oh, they have a whole bunch of questions on it. Yeah. It's like a mini-trivial pursuit card. You really get your money's worth. Oh. It's just attached.

You know what? It comes with rewards that are... It comes with two stickers for trivia champ and trivia chump. That's better for the winner. I'll pick a sticker. All right. I'm just going to pick a random one. Okay, okay, all right.

Here we go. I guess they have categories. The red is, I guess, silver screen. Here we go. Oh, it's people. Who played Conan's girlfriend in the first movie? What is this referring? Like Conan the Barbarian?

I must be Conan the Barbarian. Well, was that Grace Jones? Sandal Bergman Or Grace Slick Who? Wait what? Sandal Bergman Oh wow

All right Next question Books What is Supergirl's name On Earth These are pretty tough These are questions The people in the 1980s would know

I want to guess Is it like Aurora or something? Incorrect Well Shiraz Shira's name is Princess Adora It is What is it? Linda Lee

Linda Lee Did not know that Again with the alliterative names for a comic book character Clark Kent All right Blue TV film

Who starred in the motion picture Funny Girl Dana Barbara Streisand Correct Oh so the orange one is High IQ Who was the first pilot

to fly faster than the speed of sound Jeez It's Colin, go for it I believe that was Chuck Yeager I believe so too Correct Captain Charles Yeager We call him Chuck now

All right Indigo Purple For music What rock performer Had hits with Jeopardy And the breakup song

Oh I mean I know the weird Al But the parody I lost on Jeopardy But this is The Our Loves in Jeopardy I cannot retrieve that

It is Greg Kinn Oh okay Honestly I didn't know he had a second song. I'll admit it. Yeah. Green for sports. Colin, it's yours. Who was the first black player in the American League? I mean, I'll guess Jackie Robinson. Incorrect. Larry Dobie. Oh, okay. I've heard that definitely heard Larry Dobie. I don't think I would have been able to retrieve that. Wow, these are tough. Let's do another one. You want to do one more? Let's do one more. Okay. All right. Red for People. Who directed an American Werewolf in London?

Colin. I think it was John Landis. Yes, John Landis. Good job. Yellow for books. Who is the father of the Hardy Boys? Mr. Hardy. That was my guess.

No, wait. More specific. It is Horatio. Fenton Hardy, who is a detective. Oh, okay. Fenton. Not Horatio, Magellan. French.

The Racial Magellan Crench. Blue for TV film. Who starred as Joe Hardy in the Hardy Boys' mystery? Sean Cassidy. Oh, okay. Okay, I can see that. Okay, this one is high IQ, guys. Uh-oh.

Who was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic? Amelia Earhart? Yes. Why is that high IQ? I don't know. Maybe it's high IQ given the age range it's targeted. Right, sure. It's for boys.

It's not specifically. All right. Indigo for music. What city was Marvin Gay born in? I'll guess Detroit. Incorrect. Oh, that's what I was going to say. Indianapolis.

Washington, D.C. All right. Sports. Green for sports. What pitcher holds the record for most strikeouts in a single World Series game? 1984. Most strikeouts in a single game. I mean, Cy Young holds records for so many things.

I'm going to guess Saw Young. It is Bob Gibson. Okay, okay. I don't know if I can prove that is right or right. So this is so weird. That was accurate as of 1984, at least. Like the 1980s to me, it's like I grew up in, you know, half of my growing up was in the 1980s, right? And so like, I don't think of it as being that long, or that far away or that removed.

But to listen to these questions, which children of the 1980s would have had moderate to medium difficulty answering and just them being just so far. apart from my knowledge base right now right right right and then to throw on another 30 years of knowledge on top of that what you would have to be required to remember all right trivia battle trivia battle 84 well okay well now having lost i will eat the gum of shame all right it was mince a bee how are we going to split this i want to try it all right karen break it in half guys this gum is 28 years old at least it could have been made before that your point being hey christ Chris and I signed the waiver for a reason. Yep.

I'm not going to eat it. I'm just going to, you know, chew it for a little while. It's going to dissolve in your mouth. All right. That's my guess. A live show. Well, this is our last episode of good job, Bray. Wow.

It's dissolving in my... I told you I was going to dissolve. Wow, it kind of just turned into a paste in my mouth. It's like, it's falling apart and crumbling. It's, yeah. He was nice. You guys are going to die. That gum is.

older than most of our listeners. It's poisonous. This is what happens. You know, I will give it that the flavor actually was like what I remembered, but it did turn to like wallpaper paste as soon as it as soon as the moisture hit it. That was very exciting. Let's see how you guys feel in half an hour. Let us know.

All right. And let's jump into our topic of the week. What a big topic we're going to be talking about board games. Our topic is, what's that gross taste in there? So there are so many awesome board games out there today. Very creative, original ones. There's Arkham Horror, there's Settlers of Catan, Ticket a Ride. Someone even mentioned on Facebook, kosher land, which is the Jewish version of Candy Land.

There's lots of versions. The range is so huge. So today we'll be talking about the origins and perhaps even the scandalous, I guess, histories behind classic board games that many of us grew up with. I'm losing my baby, losing my favorite games. Well, to kick off our discussion of board games, I have a little, you know, loosening up kind of board games. game quiz to get us in the mood, and I've titled it, bored already?

Over their many decades of being in existence, some of our more popular board games have undergone changes to those board games. So what I am going to do is I'm going to tell you the alteration, and you are going to tell me the board game. Oh, okay, I like that. Change the name of Dr. Black to something else. Karen? Clue.

Yes. Clue, which is called Cludeau in the UK. The dead guy is Dr. Black. In America, it is Mr. Body. And Clue, of course, was actually originally published in the UK, and they changed it to Mr. Body when they brought it over here. Added a penalty for an unsuccessful challenge. Dana.

Scrabble. Yes. Scrabble originally published in 1948. There was no written in the rules penalty for challenging someone and getting it wrong, And that was added in 1970s. So you could just game it by challenging every single word if you wanted to. Added tiles that represent long-term goals like win the Nobel Prize or Swim the English Channel. Colin?

The Game of Life? Yes. Now, this all came as a big surprise to me. When we played the Game of Life, the whole point was just to amass as much money as you possibly could. And then whoever had the most money at the end was the winner. And so they have added to the game now, if you buy it, they're called Life Tiles. So when you do certain things during the game, you get life tiles, which you don't flip over until the end,

and it tells you, the funny thing is it tells you you did something good, like Swam the English Channel, and then it just gives you more money. Merged some categories and added wild card. Colin. Oh, now I'm not so sure, but I'm going to guess Trivial Pursuit. Yes. Wow. It used, like, arts and...

Arts and literature? Arts and literature used to be, there was a literature. category and an arts category, which they merged, and they merged other categories, and they added the Wild Card category, which was not one of the original original Tribal Pursuit categories. Triangles and Stars were changed to Roman numerals and then back again. These were pieces on the play field. They used to be in the shapes of triangles and stars.

They changed them to Roman numerals for a brief period. they change them back to triangles and stars. Now they're more representative of like infantry units. Is it Stratigo? No. It's great. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yes, yes.

Absolute energy has broken out. I know, seriously. That's why we have these buzzers. Originally published as a pen and paper game called Broad Sides. Dana. Battleship? Battleship. Oh.

Galopi, the molasses. monster renamed to Gloppy the chocolate monster Karen Kosher Land No Candy Land

Candy Land yes Apparently kids don't know what molasses is these days The metaphor of molasses Just doesn't really register as much as it had What's molasses

So they just call them Gloppy the chocolate monster They also demoted You know some of the queens to princesses for some reason In the later versions of Candyland Added brain freeze A piece in the shape of an ice cream cone.

Dana. Is it cranium? It's not cranium. Brain freeze being a type of malady you may suffer from. Colin. Operation. Operation. The only new piece added to Operation, which was voted on by players, is brain freeze.

So now there's an ice cream cone in Cavity Sam's brain. That's good. When did this happen? Wow, I didn't know there were new pieces. You start to learn about this because we only played these games as kids and now they changed them all up and stuff. Yeah, yeah. What are they doing? And his name is Cavity Sam.

His name is Cavity Sam. Not bad, right? Not bad, right. Snakes replaced with something less deadly. Karen. Shoots. Snakes and ladders became shoots and ladders. Finally, dark purple changed to brown.

Karen. Monopoly. Yes. This is what inspired this quiz. Baltic and Mediterranean Avenue, right? Did not know that. So if you go and buy Monopoly now, the dark purple spaces right after. They've actually changed them to brown.

Oh, I totally associate those with purple. With dark purple, yeah. I saw that, and I was like, no. I can see how there may be confusions with the dark blues of Park Place. And the light purples and dark blues. Yeah, there's too many blue-purpley colors and there was no brown. Yeah. Yes, well, good job everybody's brains in that quiz.

I had one other question that I wanted to ask. A little brain teaser question to see how well you know the game Monopoly. True or false. Because the game mechanics. of Monopoly are in the public domain. Anyone can make a Monopoly-style game just as long as they do not use the trademarked suffix,

Opelie. True or false? True. Parker Brothers does own the copyright to the names of the Monopoly spaces and the game mechanics are indeed in the public domain, but the Opelis suffix is also

considered to be in the public domain, which is why you see all of those whatever opollary games. That, You can, in fact, you can actually do that. I can make my own... Karenopoli. Oh, there are, you know, I mean, we're close to the CalCampus here, and you can go buy Cal-Opoli, you know, at the student store,

and a lot of universities have that. Yeah, there was, there was, the court ruling basically decided that you can do whatever opoly, and it does not infringe on the Monopoly trademark. It's funny that you said that I actually, I went against my impulse on that, because I did a lot of researching into Monopoly getting ready for the show today, and, you know, a lot of things, now that I'm connecting the dots in my mind, a lot of things, sort of the history monopoly, came out when the guy who tried to sell the game called anti-monopoly basically had to fight a lawsuit. And so a lot of sort of the secrets of the history of monopoly

really only came out as part of this court case. And the guy won, basically. So I should have known from the fact that he won that maybe that's what you were getting at. It's actually the same thing with video games, not to get too off track, but a lot of the history we know about video games, like early electronic games, it only really came to light and became widely disseminated because of court cases fighting over who had the rights to create video game machines and whether certain patents held up. But you're right. It was the same with Monopoly. And I'm sure you've got a lot of that research right here. Well, I mean, I think we've got a good intro here between talking about court cases of rights and also games changing over time. So, you know, sort of the

official line, and certainly what I remember learning is there's a guy Charles Darrow, who is really credited as, you know, the father of Monopoly. And Parker Brothers, who publishes the game today really has a lot invested in maintaining the story as well. And to be fair to him, he did do a lot to advance the game, you know, but he's sort of like a Thomas Edison type figure in the sense that he improved a lot of things, didn't necessarily invent what he is credited with. The proper inventor of the game that we know today is Monopoly is Elizabeth Maggie, and she invented it in 1903, and she was a writer and an inventor and just sort of an all-around awesome lady from the sound of it. So she got a patent. This wasn't even her first patent. So she got a patent for a game

called The Landlords game. And the game structure, if you could see a photo of it today, you would look at it. Oh, yeah, that's clearly where Monopoly came. It had properties, the same number of properties. It had real roads. It had a jail. It had the Go Square. You could roll doubles or pay $50 to get out of jail.

It was clearly the game that we now know is monopoly. Now, so what's funny or ironic about this is that she created this game to make a point about the immorality of land ownership and rent gouging and monopolies in general. It was not, it wasn't an aspirational game. You weren't, yay, I got all the money. I got the monopoly. You were the bad guy, essentially, if you got the monopoly. But it proved to be a very popular game, and she would play it with friends, and it got it produced.

Imagine little pockets of people playing this game and then introducing it to friends in their living rooms and that kind of thing. So it's sort of growing in the network, and people would invent their own home versions of it. So this was really an era of, we love this game, but we play it this way in our circle of friends in Philadelphia, House rules. And, oh, we play it this way in Chicago. Oh, we played this way in Baltimore. I always, after getting into fights with people over Monopoly, I now have a rule.

My only thing that I do when I play Monopoly is we set the board up, and then I say to everybody, I'm like, okay, if anyone has any house rules or anything out of the way now. If you don't like auctioning properties, if you put money under free parking, anything you do, get it. We all have to be on the same page before. we start this game. That is so smart. So it's so many times I've been playing monopoly and people will do something crazy and people are just like, what are you doing? Why are you putting the money there? What do you? I don't like the free parking money rule. I love it. I don't mind it, but I mean, everybody has to be on, you know, on the same page as far as how where the money goes and how do you get it. Especially with auctioning because a lot of people don't even know. They don't

even know that rule. That's right. That's right. I thought you were going to say your house rule was after you set it up, you're like, well, now if I start losing, I could flip the board. You guys agree. Like, this is my house. This is my house rule. I always play. If you land on the go square, you get extra money. Okay, wait, extra money in addition to the 200 that you get for pass.

Now, see, that's, I don't like those rules. I like, I'm a traditionalist, I guess. I'm a grumpy old man. I like playing. But my mantra was always the rules on the box. When I play with people, I'm like, the rules on the box. So it is, I mean, it is funny. in the sense that as much as I love the rigidity of the rules, I mean, the game wouldn't exist,

as I say, without evolving. You know, there was a commercially produced version called the fascinating game of finance, which was really, you know, kind of underselling it, I would say, maybe. But it was essentially a monopoly. I don't want to say knockoff or clone, because people didn't really think that way. It was just this guy had kind of taken a game he liked and modified it and was selling his own version. Fast forward, Charles Darrell eventually got a copy of the game in his hands. And he was sort of a tinkerer, an inventor, and plumber. And you've got to remember this is the depression. And, you know, he's like scrambling.

You did what you could. Yeah. You did what you could. Yeah. Yeah. Every, you're right. And, you know, it's, oh, I was an engineer for a while. And then I was a plumber.

And then I was making board games. And yeah, you're right. You kind of had to sort of invent your own way to go in the Depression. So he was a hustler. And so he was a hustler. And to his credit, he hustled hard. And he worked hard. Every day.

And he blessed in his butt. Right. So he got his hands on the copy of the game and basically thought I can improve this. And he did. You know, he really is responsible. responsible for the look of the game that we know it i mean he hand drew or hand stenciled the railroad icons the little utility bulb the the square blocky go letters and the arrow like all the the visual kind of retro or what we think of now is retro look really came from him and he did it himself because

it was on the cheap you know he didn't have money to invest in this he was turned down by milton bradley and parker brothers they both turned him down uh so he basically struck a deal with a local department store a philadelphia store and it became a hit they ordered thousands of dollars worth of sets from him keep in mind this is the depression era so parker brothers basically got wind of that and now they wanted in after he got one department store he did get a couple more after that so they wanted in so here's where the intrig comes in they as soon as they smell that this was a potential hit on their hands they they went to elizabeth maggie and paid her essentially to transfer all of her patents on the original games to parker brothers and then they helped charles darrow apply for a new patent on

this game monopoly in his name because they essentially were in in business with him the game has, you know, that we know it as Monopoly has more or less been frozen in that ever since then, ever since they applied for there. And it has, you know, needless to say, been a huge, huge, huge hit and basically saved Parker Brothers from the Depression. And I love the game, just as an aside. I think growing up, probably that was the game that my sister and I and my family played the most, because it could just take hours and hours to play. You know, the thing is, what we remember as Monopoly today, other than the color change of, say, like the Mediterranean avenues, whatever, it's still pretty much the same game.

You know, not counting the Harry Potter. version or the 24 version or the Sixthens version, the classic monopoly as you said, the same artwork, the same railroad, same prices. Even for the most part, the same pieces, the gameplay pieces. So I have a few very quick trivia questions

for you guys about the game. All right, all right. So I have mentioned the pieces here. So the original game, as we know, the Parker Brothers common version, Charles Darrow, came with six play pieces that you could play with. Can you name as many of the six pieces as you guys can? All right, Karen. The Scotty

No. Oh, of the original. Of the very original, 1935 edition. The shoe? The shoe, correct. The wheelbarrow? Nope, no wheelbarrow. So, okay, the thimble?

Thimble, correct. The car? No car. The horse? No horse. Okay, so what do we have so far? We have a hat. Shoe, thimble, hat.

The battleship? The battleship, correct. Shoe, thimble, hat, battleship. There's one more that's still. in play. It is the iron. Oh, the iron. And then those are so random. They are. Well, then there's one more, which was a cannon, like a little piece of artillery

with giant wheels. So here's why they're so random. I learned this really interesting. Was it like, were some of them things that were already being manufactured and if they had in surplus? That is absolutely right. Like a thimble. The original pieces, if you, you know, if you see photos of the vintage pieces, all have tiny little holes in them.

There's a hole in the brim of the hat. There's a hole in the loop of the shoe. Charms? They were charms cheap and readily available and so my eyes are like so open it certainly seems like when they went to production they literally just took charms that were readily available and that's why they have the holes in them because they were manufactured from the same molds that were made for put charms on the little bracelets that's a really weird thing to have a battleship charm no no if you had some if you had a relative who was in the navy and they're on a battleship like you have that A piece of artillery?

Yeah. Weird. All right. So very quickly, a couple more here. What is the most landed on spot on the board? Karen. Illinois Avenue. It is Illinois Avenue.

That's, yeah. I remember, didn't we have a conversation about this at some point? It's not only, this is excluding go to jail. No, no, no, it's number one overall. No, yeah, because it's, what is it, like seven spaces away from jail? It's number one overall, all, go is second overall. Yeah, if you don't count the sort of, turn taking places, the B&O Railroad

would be second. Right. No, Illinois's first overall. So go for a monopoly on those properties. Yeah, get Illinois. Got to buy it on. You've got to buy that monopoly. They do say that the reds and the oranges gross the most money. Yes. By the jail. That's right. Well, last one here. Speaking of the jail, what is

the name of the little guy we see stuck in the jail? Oh. What is his name? He has an official name. I'm going to say, it's like jailbird something. You're so close. It's something. It's something the jailbird. Come on.

Jim. Jesse. Jake. Jake the jailbird. Jake the jailbird. And the officer has a name, too. He is Officer Maloy. There you go. It's very stereotypical.

Good old Irish cop. Well, what is the name of the Monopoly guy? Oh, so they changed it. He is now Mr. Monopoly, but he used to be rich uncle penny bags. Correct. They actually, so the company spent a lot of money on branding. experts and marketing experts and focus group. They did all this test in marketing firms.

And they're like, oh, we need a new name for them. Because, you know, rich uncle penny bags might have a pretty bad connotation. I love that name. And with all of that money and effort thrown in, they arrived at Mr. Monopoly. Giving me a million dollars. Mr. Monopoly. So I threw it out there to our Twitter followers and our Facebook fans. What is their favorite board game?

And you know what? Monopoly is by far the most popular answer. I can believe it. I mean, it's one of those sort of the big three. You got Monopoly, maybe. It's very family-oriented, right? Yeah, it is. And everyone has a copy in there.

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And if there's a spectacular meteor shower or eclipse coming your way, we'll let you know if the sky in your area will be clear to check out the celestial display. You see, AccuWeather Daily is more than just weather. It's AccuWeather. Listen and subscribe to AccuWeather Daily, wherever you get your podcast. That's AccuWather Daily, wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, well, speaking of games that kind of came out of the Depression or really got their feet in the Depression, Scrabble was one of those games, too. It was invented by Alfred Butts, and he was an architect

before he got laid off in the Depression. And his other job was a painter and a part-time statistician. Like, yeah, another polymath here, yeah. Part-time statistician. He decided, Maybe a good way to make some money was to become a game designer, too. So he had his hands and lots of pots. He was hedging his bats. Yeah, I tried different things. And he decided there weren't enough word game. So he's going to focus on that.

Even though he wasn't into words, he wasn't a writer. That wasn't one of his part-time jobs was, you know, spelling or being a writer. He was a smart businessman, basically. He saw the Blue Ocean. He was reading an Edgar Allan Poe story, and one of the characters was talking about the frequency of letters and words. Like, E occurs a lot in that kind of. Like that's part of solving a mystery. Yes.

And so he wanted, as a statistician, he was like, let me check this out. And so he looked in the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune and some other sources to do a survey of how frequently letters popped up in different words. His first word game was a card game. It wasn't the way Scrabble is now, but it was you got dealt a hand of cards and you had to make nine and ten letter words out of your hand of cards and you're going back and forth. It was a card game. And he sold them to his friends.

that went okay. He couldn't sell him to Parker Brothers or Milton Bradley. I love how every success story is. And Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley turned them down. They said, no, thanks. So then he decided he was going to kind of take that game to the next level. So the first game was called Lexico. He decided to add a board and make it more crossword style. And he put scores and like tiles that give you triple word score and put those on the fringes so people can come back. He did a really good job balancing this game out. Yeah. So he made this game and he called it Chris Crossword. words. I imagine him in his living room making these boards. My hand, right. I mean, his architect skills, he, like, measured them out with the ruler and got all the little pieces of balsa wood

cut out. And he sold the licensing rights to this guy named James Brunow. And James Runeau is the one who changed it to Scrabble. And he took them about five years before it started catching on. They sold them to people, and they would take them to their vacation homes. And a buyer from Macy's was on vacation as the story goes and played the game. I was like, oh, this game is awesome. I love this game. Why isn't it in our stores? Although he said it in 1952 speak, he probably didn't say this game. This game is the bee's knees.

It's the cat's meow. You guys might have gone back a couple of days. No, definitely not. Then he rolled in the top hat and did the Charleston. Step into his auto-dry-round. Yeah. Hello, my baby. Hello. Hello, my ragtime girl. Life was so much better. I wish I lived in musical days.

The buyer from Macy's ordered a bunch of Scrabble from James Runeau, and it basically went viral, but old-timey viral. I don't even know how to think outside the internet anymore. Right. I mean, it's just, I mean, you have to imagine, like, for all these games, I think, board games, just getting together with, you know, other grownups and having a game in your parlor or your living room. It's very grassroots.

So I don't think I've mentioned on this, on the show before, but I used to play Scrabble semi-professionally. Like, I was in the official Scrabble Club of San Francisco and why I never did like the big, obviously I was not good enough to play tournaments and stuff. And we know there are a lot of books, very famous book, Word Freak and documentaries about professional tournament Scrabble players. And that is a really eye-opening kind of, it's a different world. It's a different level. I mean, I really, I really do believe, like, at the highest levels of Scrabble, it's a game of code. It's a game of memorization.

It's not a game of vocabulary by any stretch. Oh, they don't know what the words mean. Yeah. Many of the best players don't even speak English. I mean, it's not only is it like, I mean, we all play those three and four little Scrabble words sometimes. I don't know what this means. I just know it's legal.

But I mean, yeah, it is. It's just a game of pattern recognition. What's the highest possible pattern I can fit here? It's not about language at a certain point. And I remember I used to stay up every night and I would try to memorize all possible two-letter and three-letter combination words. Yeah, you have to know those. You have to know them.

And, yeah, at one point, it's just becoming like, oh, I know etymology-wise, these are legitimate words, put them together. They might form a real word, but I'm not even sure if that exists. And then part of it's bluffing, too. I'm like, do you want to challenge me? The absolute best thing that you can do for yourself as a living room or dining room scrabble player, you know, if you just play against, like, your relatives or friends or whatever, is Memorite. It's a short list. The two letter. Memorize the two letter words.

Because what that does for you is it actually breaks the game open and it gives you a second, like basically it gives you a second way to add words to the board. Yeah. Because typical Scrabble players either placing words horizontally or vertically, they're either crossing through a word or they're adding a letter like an S onto the end of a word. Yeah. When you memorize, and there's not very many of them, but you memorize. all the playable two-letter words, you can now add it parallel. That's one of a two-a-word. And it gives you, just doing that, gives you a brand-new move that other people don't have in their arsenal.

So, as many of our listeners, our constant listeners, know we are, in fact, on a trivia team, and the finals, the big Bay Area League finals came up recently. It was a heartbreaker. There were three rounds. I just don't even want to think about it. were in, we were in first place at the end of the first round. We were in first place at the end of the second round. We finished at the end of the third round and ninth. All the stuff we knew was in the first two rounds. But anyway, they gave us some things to study. And one of the things that they told us to study was know the bill of rights. And that was just like, okay, we can

do this. We can memorize what, you know, and basically it was just going to be like, you know, we knew there was going to be a question that was going to be, you know, what amendment which, yeah. And it's never one of the obvious ones. Exactly. It's not First Amendment. It's not Fifth Amendment. Right. And so I started thinking to myself, okay, there's got to be a a mnemonic piece of poetry somewhere on the internet that helps you memorize the bill of rights. And all I found were people on the internet asking for a mnemonic piece of poetry, you know? And so I'm like, okay, all right. There's got to be a better way.

Yes. And I've got to be able to write some bit of daughter rule that will help us to memorize the Bill of Rights. So I took it upon myself to compose a mnemonic poem. This is a public service announcement. Yes. And we'll print this on the website for this episode as well. But here is a way that you can memorize, basically, this assumes familiarity with what the Bill of Rights is, basically what the amendments say. This is helping us get to the order.

It's a prompt. When people ask you what amendment says this. So this is what I wrote. This is, this is, this was rough. I did it pretty quickly, but, but it, I think it works. Speech and such are the first rights. Two, two arms, two arms. Let's fight.

Three's a crowd. You can't stay here. Four, don't look through my things. dear. Five, because I plead the fifth. This is complimented with six, which says my day in court will be a speedy public sort. Lucky seven means a jury. Eight is no big deal.

Don't worry. We have nine lives and way more rights. People and states have equal might. So let me just run down really quickly. Wow. Bravo. Thank you. Thank you.

Nice. So let me just run down really quickly. speech and such are the first rights. The First Amendment is the freedom of speech, but also religion of the press, of petition and... Freedom of self-expression. Assembly, all that kind of stuff. Two, two arms.

So, too, of course, Second Amendment, the right to bear arms. Three is a crowd, you can't stay here. Third is about... Quarter soldiers. ...in your homes. The government can't show up and be like, hey, this soldier lives in your house now. Three's a crowd. Don't stay here.

Four, don't look through my things dear. That is, of course, a search and seizure. Five, because I plead the fifth. This is a you cannot incriminate yourself at trial. This is also other things like, you know, double jeopardy and other kind of stuff. The Sixth Amendment is the right to a public speedy trial and also in a criminal trial to a trial by jury. Right. The Seventh Amendment is just about if you have a civil trial, you also can have a trial by jury.

And these are certainly the ones where it gets murky in a trivia challenge. Right, right, right. These are the broad stroke. Eight is no big deal. Don't worry. That is that turned out to be the trivia question that we got asked. what is the amendment that concerns excessive bail or cruel and unusual punishment. That is the Eighth Amendment. No big deal. Don't worry. Your bail won't be excessive.

Don't, don't worry. We're not going to put you in the stockades. We have nine lives and way more rights. The ninth and tenth, they're the weird ones. So the ninth amendment is just because we said you had these rights in the Constitution doesn't mean you don't have other rights. That's so meta. Yeah, it's just like, look, including but not limited to. And it was because they realized that, look, we're fallible. You know what I mean? Like we, we, we wrote this Constitution, just because we didn't put it in here, doesn't mean you don't have that right. They rightly sensed that we would become a nation of lawyers. Yeah, exactly. And finally, the 10th Amendment, people and states have equal might. Anything, any right that is not given to the

federal government is reserved to the states or to the people. That gives you the basics on how to memorize the Bill of Rights. Most people know one, two, and five. And yeah, what are the other ones? It comes up a lot. Good job. All right, we're going to have this one on the site in our mnemonic archive along with all the other mnemonics we feature it on the show so hopefully this won't be helpful one day one day so you know you're right yeah not just for

trivia right yeah exactly of course this being a trivia podcast we cannot not talk about of course trivial pursuit the game that inspired our very own pop quiz hot shot segment though different today and I don't know if people

know this but I certainly didn't trivia pursuit is Canadian oh yeah What? I did know that. It's Canadian. I did know they were Canadian inventors. Why is that shocking? What are you trying to say about Canadian?

It's just, if I were Canadian, I would tell everybody this, I'd be so proud. The national game. We made Trivial Pursuit. Who cares about hockey for beer? Mike Myers, Trivial Pursuit, Pockey, Pamela Anderson. Probably other things. Wayne Gretzky, Steve Nash, Trivial Pursuit. I don't sports, too.

If someone told me that trivial pursuit was an overnight success, I would totally believe them, right? Like, how can trivial pursuit not be an overnight success? Obviously, we're a little bit biased because we're trivia nuts, but like the idea, you're like, of course, people will love this. Of course, that is not the way it happened. And it was a really long and bumpy ride for inventors, Canadian inventors, Chris Haney and Scott Abbott. And they started off in the early 80s and hoping that. this would be very successful, and it took them a long time. They got a few friends to help them out in terms of investment,

and they're like, okay, well, we have the idea. They have the whole wheel. They're also trivia nuts, too. They actually were reporters and journalists for Canadian newspapers in Montreal. But the thing is, now they have a little bit of investment. They have the whole kind of idea of the game. However, no one predicted one big problem about trivial pursuit. and why it will take a lot of money to make.

Can you guys what it might be? I'm just going to guess like just something around the volume of questions they would have to produce. Exactly. Well, not even like because, I mean, they're trivia nuts. They can find out a lot of the questions and stuff. It's the cards. Imagine how many questions they are and how many cards they would have to print. It's true.

The game would be very expensive. Double print on both sides with full color. In color, right, right. And these boxes of cards. And no one really back in the day thought about it Like oh, oops, yeah, there's this big production cost And the funny thing is the original Trivial Pursuit game Was one of costliest game to produce

Because it's all just printing It's not just a board in some plastic pieces It's a board and some plastic pieces And hundreds and hundreds of cards Everything other games have plus way more Yeah, and those are very, I mean I remember the original set Like those two decks of cards are heavy way Yeah, those are beefy, yeah

And, you know, after finally getting the first batch of games produced, Haney and Abbott, they're ready for their big time debut. You know, they had plans. They had their eyes set on the big toy fairs in Canada, especially the toy fair in New York. We're debuting this awesome Trivial Pursuit game. What year is this? When is this? This was 1982. What else was going on with games back in 1982?

Donkey Kong and the whole arcade game sweep. And, of course, all the toy fairs and the conventions were. just, you know, basically they had video game fever. And, like, they look at Trivial Pursuit, be like, who wants to sit around and move pieces and read questions out of cards, exactly. But Trivial Pursuit did prevail through word of mouth, like previous board games we talked about. And finally, people took notice.

And mostly because of the game itself, it's not a kiddie game. Yeah. And that's the big difference when you look at board games. And a lot of our family-oriented, Scrabble can be both a kid game and a kid game. and an adult game, but really, Trigger Pursuit was like, this is for adults. I remember, I mean, it must have been the mid-80s, I guess, by the time it finally hit markets then. But I remember when it came out and just, even as a kid, thinking, what, it just, this

looks like a grown-up game. Because of the design, there weren't big flashy cartoon bubbles and, you know. And that was, yeah. The last month is there. They realized, they had to look like something, like a handsome set of encyclopedias that you would place into your cabinet in your living room. They had a pretty low budget. creating the look of the game that's why it's kind of sparse and very serious which is a happy

coincidence hey pro tip yeah inventors minimal is cheap exactly and their marketing was pretty genius back in the day when they debut the game they sent every celebrity mentioned in the game a copy of the game that's clever god that's smart that is such good marketing on their magazine print ads they would have example cards and example questions like in their ad. I'd be like, oh, you know, here's a challenge. The first one's free. Yeah.

And, of course, Trivial Pursue spawned, oh, God, there's so many different variations of Trivial Pursue. And, you know, like we said, Simpsons and Star Wars, Star Wars, Twilight, yeah. Disney, which my fiancé Regina constantly asked me, do you want to, do you want to play Disney Trivial Pursuit with me? I'm like, what, so I can just sit there and just feel horrible for three hours? Here, I actually brought from the comforts of my own home. An example, trivia pursuit card from the Star Wars edition.

And I want to link this back to one of our previous episodes. We talked about in our all-quiz, I believe, we talked about the Parsec and Hans Solo and the Castle Run. And yep, you guys called it. We got a lot of emails regarding whether or not Han Solo correctly or incorrectly talked about the Parsec. But here I have the Star Wars Trivial Pursuit card. And let's see how well everybody. Colin does on this. You never know.

I'm not even going to pick up my buzzer. All right. I have no idea what these categories are. So here we go. Which leg does Hans Solo strap his blaster to? I'm going to say his left leg. I believe it's his right leg. I think he's right-handed.

It is on his right-handed. 50-50 still got it wrong. All right. What type of ship discovered the falcon when it arrived in the Alderon system? What type of ship did I... Imperial Cruiser? I'm not sure what they're looking for, yeah. Incorrect.

It is a Thai fighter. Okay, right, right. It was like a... I'm sorry. That's how it feels kind of. Bonus point. What does Thai stand for? Uh, that is twin ion engine.

Correct. Oh. Here's back to the card. What was the gift Luke Skywalker gave to Jabba the Hut? These two droids. Yes. Oh, his sister. Incorrect.

R2D2 and C3PO, these fine droids. Okay. How many moons circle Yavin, according to the Death Star's orbital schematic. Come on, Colin. Is it three? Incorrect, four. Four. Oh, I could hear our fans, like in right now, being like, oh, my God.

No, yeah, that's right, yeah, that's right, yeah, that's right, yeah, what did R2D2 falsely claim was merely old data? Oh, the, I don't even know if you need to buzz. There was the hologram of Princess Leia. Correct. Okay, all right. Okay, what did John Molo designed for Star Wars to earn a mention in the credits? It's the lightsaber. It is nice.

That's a good guess, actually. Delicious B. Crum? It is costumes. What? Oh, oh, oh. Wait, you get special mention and not like an actual credit? That seems like a job. What a weird anticlimactic trivia answer.

That's not a thank you. That's an actual job. Yeah. He received mention for doing his job. We just want to thank you for all this. Okay. This is in addition to the paycheck? I'm still getting paid, though, right?

A lot of cool board game talk And came across this And I thought it was a really lovely note And I want to end our board game talk By sharing a quote And keep in mind this is back in the early 80s And electronic games were on the rise Right?

And board game people were kind of freaking out And it was just a weird time For that whole industry Richard Selchow And Ryder Yep, then president of Selchial and Ryder company Makers of Scrabble and Parchizi said in a magazine

and this is his quote. One hears a lot of debate in the industry about future of games. Are electronics the wave of the future? Will board games survive? We feel these discussions are somewhat irrelevant. There should be no dispute about whether the future of games lies in microcomputers or small wooden game pieces.

There is ample room for both if the game involved are fun to play. I like that. I like that attitude. There's always room for quality. Well, again, I mean, board games can still do things the computers cannot. There really is something to the honor system imposed by board games versus video games. Oh, that's a really good point. When you play, I mean this in both ways, because when you play a video game, the video game always keeps track and it tells you you can't do that and it gives you the exact right amount of money, especially with kids, you know, like Candyland.

Candyland is a game of total random chance, right? When you shuffle the cards and have the card deck in front of you, a winner has been predetermined. And it is not about playing the game. It's about learning how to wait and take your turn and follow instructions. And be honest, because a game is just a set of rules. And this comes back to me in like the House Rules of Monopoly. It's like the entire point of this game is that we all agree to submit ourselves to a set of rules. We all have to have these rules.

And that's like what is fun is here's the set of rules, work within that set of rules to have the good outcome. And so that's what's interesting about the honor system of board games is that you have to, all kind of mutually enforced that set, where video games, it takes over for you. In video games, Scrabble sometimes, they don't let you play bogus words. Yes. And that's part of the game. Bluffing is part of the game. I absolutely agree.

So either way, whether you're a bluffer or whether bluffing is part of the game or not, which video games have trouble letting you do it, or whether it's all about being on the honor system, like not giving up that control and having to have that human control is what makes it so appealing. Awesome. Well, thank you guys for joining me. and thank you guys, listeners, for listening. And hope this inspires you to get out that board game

and play something with your friends or families and whatnot. And you can find us on a Zoom Marketplace, on iTunes, on our website, which is good job, braiding.com. Join us on Facebook and Twitter. And we'll see you guys next week. Bye. Bye. And everything I would like to be, I can fly higher than an eagle, because you are the wind beneath my wings.

Hello, this is Matt from the Explorers podcast. I want to invite you to join me on the voyages and journeys of the most famous explorers in the history of the world. These are the thrilling and captivating stories of Magellan, Shackleton, Lewis, and Clark, and so many other famous and not so famous adventures from throughout history. Go to Explorespodcast.com or just look us up on your podcast app. That's the Explorers Podcast.