Tuesday Trivia

I realized this morning that I missed Monday Movies, but no one said anything, so I'm assuming you didn't miss it either. Good. So ....

Tuesday Trivia. How about some fun with Games and Toys?

CLUE

Anthony Pratt, a lawyer's clerk from Birmingham, England, invented the game of Clue/Cluedo. He invented the game in 1943 with the help of his wife (who designed the board). In 1948 he submitted it to Waddington's Games in Leeds, who published it for the first time in 1949.

The game was originally called Murder, but the name was changed before publication. Cluedo was the original name of Clue before it was changed to Clue when Parker Brothers bought it in 1949.

The original ten suspects were Doctor Black, Mr. Brown, Mr. Gold, The Rev. Mr. Green, Miss Grey, Professor Plum, Miss Scarlet, Nurse White, Mrs. Silver and Colonel Yellow. These were changed to the infamous six - Colonel Mustard,Professor Plum, Reverend Green, Mrs. White, Miss Scarlett and Mrs. Peacock when the game was published.

During development, the following weapons were proposed to be in the Clue game: the dagger, revolver, rope, bomb, an axe, lead pipe, candlestick, spanner, poison and a hypodermic syringe.

Mr. Green is only used in the North American versions of Clue who replaces the original Reverend Green.

Clue is the only board game that has had a movie made following its plot. The Clue board game is available in over 40 countries including Japan and China.

CHESS

Chess is called the game of kings, because for many centuries it was played primarily by nobility and the upper classes.

The names of the pieces-- the queen, king, knight, rook and bishop came about during the Middle Ages, when society was extremely oriented towards war and rigidly stratified. During the Renaissance period, society became more dynamic and rules were added to enable rapid attack techniques. These include making the queen more powerful, and permitting pawns to move two squares on the first move.

The rook is named from an Arabic word rukh, meaning chariot. This reflects its ability to move quickly in straight lines, but not leap over obstacles. During the Middle Ages, when chariots were no longer in use, the rook was gradually modified to look more like the turret of a castle.

The folding chess board was originally invented in 1125 by a chess-playing priest. Since the Church forbid priests to play chess, he hid his chess board by making one that looked simply like two books lying together.

The Isle of Lewis chess pieces are the oldest surviving complete chess set known. Discovered on they Isle of Lewis, they are made from walrus tusks and show their characters in a range of bad moods - from anger to depression.

Lewis Carrol’s novel “Through the Looking Glass” was based on a chess game, much the way “Alice in Wonderland” was based on playing cards. The idea for picturing the country-side as a chess board came from Lewis Carrol’s days in Oxmoor, where his apartment overlooked a cultivated moor, separated into neat, rectangular farmer’s fields.

BOWLING

Objects used for a game similar to bowling, which date from 5200 BC, were found in the tomb of a young Egyptian boy.

In the third and fourth centuries, bowling in Europe was a religious ceremony, participants tried to hit the pin, or kegel (hence the word kegling for bowling) in order to be judged free of sin.

Dutch colonists brought bowling to America in the 17th century. The game consisted of 9 pins set in a triangle. It was regularly played in an area of New York City still known as "Bowling Green".

The Women's International Bowling Congress (WIBC) was founded in 1916 and has grown to 3.5 million members. The Professional Bowlers association was organized in 1958 to promote exhibition and arrange major tournaments. Interest in bowling, particularly in the United Slates, had its major spurt after World War II.

The American Bowling Congress (ABC), founded in 1895, is the governing body for tenpins. The ABC standardized rules and the scoring method, and it also organized the fast U.S. national bowling tournament, in 1901. Each year the ABC sponsors nationals in singles, doubles and five-man team competition for its members, whose numbers exceeds 5 million.

The introduction of the first automatic pinsetter in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1952 was responsible for much of the increase in bowling popularity. Previously, pins were set by young boys, and Bowling Alleys, as the establishments were called, often had poor reputations.

The Italian version of bowling, Bocce, which is still played today, is somewhat similar to "Lawn Bowling", an English game originating over 800 years ago.

RUBICK'S CUBE
(I was never good at this)

The Rubik's Cube has 43 quintillion different possible configurations (or 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 to be precise) and only ONE solution.

The World Rubik Cube championship was held in Budapest on June 5, 1982. Nineteen National Champions took part. Minh Thai, the US Champion, won by solving the Cube in of 22.95 seconds.

At the World Championships, held every two years, there are also other official records to be fought for, including solving the Cube one-handed, blindfold; even using only bare feet! The most expensive Rubik's Cube was the Masterpiece Cube, produced by Diamond Cutters International in 1995. The actual-size, fully functional cube features 22.5 karats of amethyst, 34 karats of rubies, and 34 karats of emeralds, all set in 18-karat gold. It has been valued at over 1.5 million dollars.

The Rubik's Cube was invented in 1974 by Hungarian Professor Erno Rubik. Its worldwide launch took place in 1980.

If you made a single turn of one of the Cube's faces every second, it would take you 1,400 million million years to go through all the possible configurations. (In comparison, the universe itself is only 14 thousand million years old.)