
1 WE HAVE been playing board games in some cases, the same board games for millennia. Chess, checkers, backgammon and Go all have origins in the ancient world. King Tut was buried with multiple sets of an Egyptian game called senet. Ajax and Achilles still appear hunched over a board in the midst of play on hundreds of pieces of Greek pottery. And the Ashanti people of Ghana are believed to have created a board game called wari, which you may know as mancala.
2 IT WASN'T until the 19th century that board games began to be sold commercially. The first, Mansion of Happiness, came out in England in 1800. The 'mansion' was heaven, and players raced to get there. Decades later, Milton Bradley reworked-and rebranded it as The Checkered Game of Life. It was the only board game Bradley personally worked on.
3 ANOTHER POPULAR racing game, Parcheesi, has roots 3 in ancient India, where it was called pachisi, from the Hindi word for 'twenty-five', the highest possible outcome of a single throw. But whereas Americans only tweaked the name, the Brits decided to call it Ludo ('lew-doh), Latin for 'I play. So when Englishman Anthony E. Pratt developed his murder-mystery board game in 1943, he called it Cluedo, playing on Ludo.
4 IN INTERNATIONAL versions of Cluedo, the colourful cast can look quite different from the US version. Professor Plum was originally called Dr Orange in Spain. Mr Green goes by Chef Lettuce in Chile. Mrs Peacock is Mrs Purple in Brazil and Mrs Periwinkle in France and in Switzerland, she's Captain Blue, a man.
This story is from the December 2022 edition of Reader's Digest India.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the December 2022 edition of Reader's Digest India.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In

Calendar Girls
After Molly Baker’s husband died suddenly, her friends organized a year’s worth of support

THE GREAT WILDEBEEST MIGRATION
It's a spectacular sight when countless ruminants cross the Serengeti in search of greener pastures

Soumitra Chatterjee's Tryst with Destiny
The encounter that led a budding actor to a legendary filmmaker, and sparked an iconic creative partnership during the golden age of Bengali cinema

Frozen in Time
The life and work of Vittorio Sella, a pioneer of early mountain photography and the man behind some of the very first images of the Himalayas

HALLUCINATIONS
There was a monkey perched on the IV drip stand to the right of my hospital bed. It scowled at me, but I wasn’t afraid: A brief simian visit was part of my daily routine. I never questioned why there was a monkey in the hospital. I wasn’t lucid enough to recognize that my mind was playing tricks on me.

Music in the Air
Cuba is bursting with sound, and each region moves to its own defining rhythm

SHOULD YOU TRY A DETOX TREATMENT?
It's a popular new-year health habit. But science doesn't support it

Ringing True
He thought his late parents' wedding bands were gone forever

14,000-FOOT MIRACLE
The skydiver fully expected to die when her parachute failed to open. Instead, she's writing the next chapter of her life

I SURVIVED!
THREE UNUSUAL MEDICAL EMERGENCIES, AS TOLD BY THE PEOPLE WHO NEARLY DIED FROM THEM