Board Games and Toys Quiz
Monopoly, Scrabble, LEGO, Barbie, Rubik's Cube and Risk: 15 questions on the games and toys we grew up with.
How many squares are there on a standard chessboard?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
64
A chessboard is an eight by eight grid, giving 64 squares, half light and half dark. The same board is used for draughts, or checkers, in most of the world.
By convention the board is set up so that each player has a light square in the bottom right corner, often remembered as white on the right.
The streets on the original Monopoly board are named after real streets in which US city?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Atlantic City
The 1935 Parker Brothers edition used street names from Atlantic City, New Jersey, including Baltic Avenue, Marvin Gardens and Boardwalk. The names came from an earlier homemade version played by friends in the resort town.
Marvin Gardens is actually a misspelling: the real neighbourhood near Atlantic City is called Marven Gardens, and Parker Brothers has kept the error ever since.
Which chess piece is the only one allowed to jump over other pieces?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Knight
The knight moves in an L shape, two squares in one direction and one square at a right angle, and it may leap over any pieces in between. Every other piece is blocked by anything standing in its path.
Because of its unusual move, a knight always lands on a square of the opposite colour to the one it started from.
The teddy bear is named after which US president?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Theodore Roosevelt
On a hunting trip in Mississippi in 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a bear that had been tied to a tree. A cartoon of the incident inspired a Brooklyn shopkeeper to sell stuffed bears as Teddy's bears.
The German company Steiff began making jointed toy bears at almost the same time in 1902, so Germany and the United States both claim the invention.
In which year did the Barbie doll go on sale?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
1959
Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler unveiled Barbie at the New York Toy Fair on 9 March 1959, selling about 350,000 dolls in the first year. She was named after Handler's daughter Barbara.
Barbie was based on a German novelty doll called Bild Lilli, which Handler had spotted in a Swiss shop window while on holiday in 1956.
Which two letters are worth ten points each in a standard English Scrabble set?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Q and Z
Q and Z are the only ten-point tiles, with J and X worth eight and K worth five. Inventor Alfred Butts set the values by counting how often each letter appeared on the front page of the New York Times.
A standard set has 100 tiles, including two blanks, and the most common letter, E, has twelve tiles.
In the original US edition of Monopoly, which is the most expensive property to buy?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Boardwalk
Boardwalk costs 400 dollars, the highest price on the board, and a hotel there charges the game's top rent of 2,000 dollars. Park Place, its dark blue partner, costs 350 dollars.
In the British edition the dark blue pair became Mayfair and Park Lane, and the cheapest square, Baltic Avenue, became Old Kent Road.
Which company launched the Hot Wheels range of die-cast toy cars in 1968?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Mattel
Mattel introduced Hot Wheels in 1968 to compete with Britain's Matchbox cars, giving its models low-friction wheels and bright Spectraflame paint so they would race faster on plastic track.
The first 16 Hot Wheels cars, now known as the Sweet Sixteen, included a Custom Camaro and a Volkswagen Beetle, and mint originals sell for thousands of dollars.
The name of the block-stacking game Jenga comes from a Swahili word meaning what?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
To build
Jenga was created by British designer Leslie Scott, who grew up in East Africa, and launched at the London Toy Fair in 1983. The name comes from the Swahili verb kujenga, meaning to build or construct.
A standard Jenga tower starts with 54 wooden blocks arranged in 18 layers of three.
In which year did Ernő Rubik build the first prototype of the puzzle now known as the Rubik's Cube?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
1974
Rubik, a professor of architecture in Budapest, built his first working cube in spring 1974 as a teaching aid and only later realised it made a puzzle. It was sold in Hungary as the Magic Cube before Ideal Toy launched it worldwide in 1980.
Rubik needed about a month to solve his own invention for the first time, whereas modern speedcubers have solved it in under four seconds.
Chess is generally traced back to chaturanga, a game first played in which country?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
India
Chaturanga was played in India by around the sixth century and spread to Persia, where it became shatranj. Arab conquerors carried it across North Africa into Spain, and the modern queen and bishop moves emerged in Europe in the 1400s.
The word checkmate comes from the Persian phrase shah mat, usually translated as the king is helpless.
Trivial Pursuit, created in 1979 by Chris Haney and Scott Abbott, was invented in which country?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Canada
Haney, a photo editor at the Montreal Gazette, and Abbott, a sports journalist, dreamed up the game in Montreal in December 1979 after finding pieces missing from their Scrabble set. It went on sale in Canada in 1981.
At its 1984 peak the game sold about 20 million copies in the United States alone, and Hasbro bought the rights in 2008 for 80 million dollars.
Before it became a toy in the 1950s, Play-Doh was sold as what?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Wallpaper cleaner
Cincinnati soap maker Kutol Products sold the compound in the 1930s as a putty for cleaning coal soot off wallpaper. When home heating switched to gas, the firm rebranded it as a children's modelling toy in the mid-1950s.
Hasbro has trademarked the distinctive smell of Play-Doh, describing it as a sweet, slightly musky, vanilla-like fragrance.
In which year did LEGO patent its modern brick with the stud-and-tube locking system?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
1958
The LEGO Group filed the patent for its stud-and-tube brick on 28 January 1958, and bricks made that year still lock together with today's pieces. The company itself dates back to 1932, when Ole Kirk Christiansen began making wooden toys.
Just six standard two-by-four LEGO bricks of the same colour can be combined in more than 915 million different ways.
Which board game was invented in 1957 by Albert Lamorisse, a French film director best known for The Red Balloon?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Risk
Lamorisse released his game of world conquest in France as La Conquête du Monde in 1957, and Parker Brothers published it in the United States as Risk in 1959. His short film The Red Balloon won an Academy Award for its screenplay.
Diplomacy was devised by American Allan Calhamer in 1954, while Stratego grew out of a Dutch game first sold in the 1940s.
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All General Knowledge quizzes →About the Board Games and Toys Quiz
Barbie went on sale in 1959, the modern LEGO brick was patented a year earlier, and Play-Doh started life as a wallpaper cleaner. The toy box and the games cupboard are full of stories that most players have never heard.
These 15 questions cover the classics people actually argue about: the most expensive square in Monopoly, the letters worth ten points in Scrabble, where chess came from and which film director invented Risk. The early questions are easy wins for anyone who has played a rainy-day board game, while the later ones reward true toy collectors. Great for family quiz nights, nostalgic adults and anyone who still owns a Rubik's Cube they never solved.
You will find 15 multiple choice questions here, each with four options. Difficulty: Medium. Most people finish in about 6 minutes, and every answer comes with a short explanation and one extra fact worth keeping.
How to play
Read the question and pick one of the four answers. The correct answer is revealed straight away with a short explanation, then press Next question to keep going. At the end you get your score out of 15 and a full review of your round. Play again any time and the questions arrive in a fresh order. There is no timer and no account.
Good to know before you play
What is the most expensive property in Monopoly?
In the original US edition it is Boardwalk at 400 dollars. The British edition replaces it with Mayfair, and other countries use their own famous streets.
When was Barbie first sold?
Mattel launched Barbie at the American International Toy Fair in New York on 9 March 1959. Her boyfriend Ken followed in 1961.
Where did chess come from?
Chess developed from chaturanga, a game played in India around the sixth century, which spread to Persia and then through the Arab world into Europe.
Answer key: all 15 questions with explanations
- How many squares are there on a standard chessboard?
64 A chessboard is an eight by eight grid, giving 64 squares, half light and half dark. The same board is used for draughts, or checkers, in most of the world. By convention the board is set up so that each player has a light square in the bottom right corner, often remembered as white on the right. - The streets on the original Monopoly board are named after real streets in which US city?
Atlantic City The 1935 Parker Brothers edition used street names from Atlantic City, New Jersey, including Baltic Avenue, Marvin Gardens and Boardwalk. The names came from an earlier homemade version played by friends in the resort town. Marvin Gardens is actually a misspelling: the real neighbourhood near Atlantic City is called Marven Gardens, and Parker Brothers has kept the error ever since. - Which chess piece is the only one allowed to jump over other pieces?
Knight The knight moves in an L shape, two squares in one direction and one square at a right angle, and it may leap over any pieces in between. Every other piece is blocked by anything standing in its path. Because of its unusual move, a knight always lands on a square of the opposite colour to the one it started from. - The teddy bear is named after which US president?
Theodore Roosevelt On a hunting trip in Mississippi in 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a bear that had been tied to a tree. A cartoon of the incident inspired a Brooklyn shopkeeper to sell stuffed bears as Teddy's bears. The German company Steiff began making jointed toy bears at almost the same time in 1902, so Germany and the United States both claim the invention. - In which year did the Barbie doll go on sale?
1959 Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler unveiled Barbie at the New York Toy Fair on 9 March 1959, selling about 350,000 dolls in the first year. She was named after Handler's daughter Barbara. Barbie was based on a German novelty doll called Bild Lilli, which Handler had spotted in a Swiss shop window while on holiday in 1956. - Which two letters are worth ten points each in a standard English Scrabble set?
Q and Z Q and Z are the only ten-point tiles, with J and X worth eight and K worth five. Inventor Alfred Butts set the values by counting how often each letter appeared on the front page of the New York Times. A standard set has 100 tiles, including two blanks, and the most common letter, E, has twelve tiles. - In the original US edition of Monopoly, which is the most expensive property to buy?
Boardwalk Boardwalk costs 400 dollars, the highest price on the board, and a hotel there charges the game's top rent of 2,000 dollars. Park Place, its dark blue partner, costs 350 dollars. In the British edition the dark blue pair became Mayfair and Park Lane, and the cheapest square, Baltic Avenue, became Old Kent Road. - Which company launched the Hot Wheels range of die-cast toy cars in 1968?
Mattel Mattel introduced Hot Wheels in 1968 to compete with Britain's Matchbox cars, giving its models low-friction wheels and bright Spectraflame paint so they would race faster on plastic track. The first 16 Hot Wheels cars, now known as the Sweet Sixteen, included a Custom Camaro and a Volkswagen Beetle, and mint originals sell for thousands of dollars. - The name of the block-stacking game Jenga comes from a Swahili word meaning what?
To build Jenga was created by British designer Leslie Scott, who grew up in East Africa, and launched at the London Toy Fair in 1983. The name comes from the Swahili verb kujenga, meaning to build or construct. A standard Jenga tower starts with 54 wooden blocks arranged in 18 layers of three. - In which year did Ernő Rubik build the first prototype of the puzzle now known as the Rubik's Cube?
1974 Rubik, a professor of architecture in Budapest, built his first working cube in spring 1974 as a teaching aid and only later realised it made a puzzle. It was sold in Hungary as the Magic Cube before Ideal Toy launched it worldwide in 1980. Rubik needed about a month to solve his own invention for the first time, whereas modern speedcubers have solved it in under four seconds. - Chess is generally traced back to chaturanga, a game first played in which country?
India Chaturanga was played in India by around the sixth century and spread to Persia, where it became shatranj. Arab conquerors carried it across North Africa into Spain, and the modern queen and bishop moves emerged in Europe in the 1400s. The word checkmate comes from the Persian phrase shah mat, usually translated as the king is helpless. - Trivial Pursuit, created in 1979 by Chris Haney and Scott Abbott, was invented in which country?
Canada Haney, a photo editor at the Montreal Gazette, and Abbott, a sports journalist, dreamed up the game in Montreal in December 1979 after finding pieces missing from their Scrabble set. It went on sale in Canada in 1981. At its 1984 peak the game sold about 20 million copies in the United States alone, and Hasbro bought the rights in 2008 for 80 million dollars. - Before it became a toy in the 1950s, Play-Doh was sold as what?
Wallpaper cleaner Cincinnati soap maker Kutol Products sold the compound in the 1930s as a putty for cleaning coal soot off wallpaper. When home heating switched to gas, the firm rebranded it as a children's modelling toy in the mid-1950s. Hasbro has trademarked the distinctive smell of Play-Doh, describing it as a sweet, slightly musky, vanilla-like fragrance. - In which year did LEGO patent its modern brick with the stud-and-tube locking system?
1958 The LEGO Group filed the patent for its stud-and-tube brick on 28 January 1958, and bricks made that year still lock together with today's pieces. The company itself dates back to 1932, when Ole Kirk Christiansen began making wooden toys. Just six standard two-by-four LEGO bricks of the same colour can be combined in more than 915 million different ways. - Which board game was invented in 1957 by Albert Lamorisse, a French film director best known for The Red Balloon?
Risk Lamorisse released his game of world conquest in France as La Conquête du Monde in 1957, and Parker Brothers published it in the United States as Risk in 1959. His short film The Red Balloon won an Academy Award for its screenplay. Diplomacy was devised by American Allan Calhamer in 1954, while Stratego grew out of a Dutch game first sold in the 1940s.
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