Board Game Trivia Quiz Questions and Answers

Trivia quiz questions and answers about board games.

Board Game Trivia Quiz Questions and Answers

What is a board game?
A: A board game is a tabletop game that involves counters or pieces moved or placed on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules.

Some games are based on pure strategy, but many contain an element of what?
A: Chance; and some are purely chance, with no element of skill.

Games usually have a what, that a player aims to achieve?
A: A goal.

Early board games represented a battle between two armies, and most modern board games are still based on what?
A: Defeating opponents in terms of counters, winning position, or accrual of points.

Board games representation of real-life situations can range from having no inherent theme, like checkers, to having a specific theme and narrative, like Cluedo.

Rules can range from the very simple, like Tic-tac-toe, to those describing a game universe in great detail, like what?
A: Dungeons & Dragons – although most of the latter are role-playing games where the board is secondary to the game, serving to help visualize the game scenario.

The time required to learn to play or master a game varies greatly from game to game, but is not necessarily correlated with what?
A: The number or complexity of rules.

Games like chess or Go possess relatively simple rule sets, but have great what?
A: Strategic depth.

A number of important historical sites, artifacts, and documents shed light on early board games such as what?
A: Jiroft civilization game boards in Iran.

What is the oldest board game known to have existed?
A: Senet, found in Predynastic and First Dynasty burials of Egypt, c.

3500 BC and 3100 BC respectively,.

Senet was pictured in a fresco found in whose tomb?
A: Merknera's tomb (3300–2700 BC).

Hounds and Jackals another ancient Egyptian board game appeared around when?
A: 2000 BC.

The first complete set of this game was discovered from a Theban tomb that dates to when?
A: The 13th Dynasty.

This game was also popular where?
A: In Mesopotamia and the Caucasus.

Where did backgammon originate?
A: In ancient Persia over 5,000 years ago.

Chess, Pachisi and Chaupar originated in what country?
A: India.

Go and Liubo originated where?
A: In China.

Patolli originated in Mesoamerica played by whom?
A: The ancient Aztec .

The Royal Game of Ur was found in the Royal Tombs of Ur, dating to when?
A: 4,600 years ago.

In 17th and 18th century colonial America, the agrarian life of the country left little time for what?
A: For game playing though draughts (checkers), bowling, and card games were not unknown.

The Pilgrims and Puritans of New England frowned on game playing and viewed dice as what?
A: Instruments of the devil.

When the Governor William Bradford discovered a group of non-Puritans playing stool-ball, pitching the bar, and pursuing other sports in the streets on Christmas Day, 1622, what did he do?
A: He confiscated their implements, reprimanded them, and told them their devotion for the day should be confined to their homes.

The board game Traveler's Tour Through the United States and its sister game Traveler's Tour Through Europe were published by New York City bookseller F. & R. Lockwood in 1822 and today claims what?
A: The distinction of being the first board game published in the United States.

As the U.S. shifted from agrarian to urban living in the 19th century what became available to the middle class?
A: Greater leisure time and a rise in income.

The American home, once the center of economic production, became the locus of what?
A: Entertainment, enlightenment, and education under the supervision of mothers.

Children were encouraged to play board games that did what?
A: Developed literacy skills and provided moral instruction.

The earliest board games published in the United States were based upon what?
A: Christian morality.

The Mansion of Happiness (1843), for example, sent players along a what?
A: A path of virtues and vices that led to the Mansion of Happiness (Heaven).

The Game of Pope and Pagan, or The Siege of the Stronghold of Satan by the Christian Army (1844) pitted an image on its board of what?
A: A Hindu woman committing suttee against missionaries landing on a foreign shore.

The missionaries are cast in white as what?
A: The symbol of innocence, temperance, and hope, while the pope and pagan are cast in black, the color of "gloom of error, and ... grief at the daily loss of empire".

Advances in paper making and printmaking during the period enabled the commercial production of what?
A: Relatively inexpensive board games.

What was the most significant advance?
A: It was the development of chromolithography, a technological achievement that made bold, richly colored images available at affordable prices.

Games cost as little as how much?
A: US$.25 for a small boxed card game to $3.00 for more elaborate games.

In 1860, The Checkered Game of Life rewarded players for what?
A: Mundane activities such as attending college, marrying, and getting rich.

Daily life rather than eternal life became what?
A: The focus of board games.

The Checkered Game of Life was the first to focus on secular virtues rather than religious virtues, and sold how many copies its first year?
A: 40,000.

Game of the District Messenger Boy, or Merit Rewarded, published in 1886 by the New York City firm of McLoughlin Brothers, was one of the first board games based on what?
A: Materialism and capitalism published in the United States.

The game is a typical what?
A: Roll-and-move track board game.

Players move their tokens along the track at the spin of the arrow toward what?
A: The goal at the track's end.

Some spaces on the track will advance the player while others will do what?
A: Send him back.

In the affluent 1880s, Americans witnessed the publication of Algeresque rags to riches games that permitted players to do what?
A: To emulate the capitalist heroes of the age.

One of the first such games, The Game of the District Messenger Boy, encouraged what idea?
A: The idea that the lowliest messenger boy could ascend the corporate ladder to its topmost rung.

Such games insinuated that the accumulation of wealth brought what?
A: Increased social status.

Competitive capitalistic games culminated in 1935 with what?
A: Monopoly, the most commercially successful board game in U.S. history.