{"id":622444,"date":"2025-12-09T15:48:19","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T15:48:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/622444\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T15:48:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T15:48:19","slug":"the-iconic-murder-mystery-board-game-invented-during-wwii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/622444\/","title":{"rendered":"The Iconic Murder Mystery Board Game Invented During WWII"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/alexander-lyashkov-LDUeoEWFPD0-unsplash-1024x683.jpg\" class=\"img-fluid\" alt=\"Cluedo board game\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\"\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCredit: Alexander Lyashkov, Unsplash<\/p>\n<p>    Save<\/p>\n<p>Be it boredom or fear, when the <strong>WWII air raids hit Birmingham<\/strong>, Anthony E. Pratt and his wife, Elva, kept themselves busy by inventing a board game. They drew on what they knew. Agatha Christie novels, Victorian parlour games, and Moseley\u2019s Highbury Hall. In 1944, Pratt applied for a patent for a <strong>murder mystery-themed game<\/strong>\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Originally named Murder, it was shortly renamed <strong>Cluedo <\/strong>(a play on \u201cclue\u201d and \u201cludo\u201d, the Latin word for \u201cI play\u201d, although it was named Clue in the United States). Cluedo was officially released in 1949, and in the 70+ years since grown into <strong>one of the most iconic board games ever made<\/strong>\u2014it\u2019s up there with Monopoly and Scrabble.<\/p>\n<p> <img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-21152\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/cluedo-DSC02436.jpg\" alt=\"An original version of Cluedo\" width=\"1080\" height=\"720\"  \/>Credit: Birmingham City Council <\/p>\n<p>Hasbro, who now own the rights to Cluedo on both sides of the Atlantic, states that the classic board game Cluedo has <strong>sold well over 150 million copies<\/strong>, but could be even higher\u2026 This is on top of <strong>video game spin-offs<\/strong>, a<strong> movie adaptation starring Tim Curry<\/strong>, an <strong>Off-Broadway musical<\/strong>, <strong>children\u2019s and comic books<\/strong>, and even a <strong>UK game show<\/strong>. <\/p>\n<p> <b>How do you play Cluedo?<\/b> <\/p>\n<p>Put simply, the objective of the game is to <strong>deduce the details of a murder<\/strong>. From six characters, six murder weapons, and nine rooms (with 324 possibilities), players roll dice and move around the board making suggestions and accusations to who it was, how it happened and where it happened\u2014as players learn more about each other in the process. <\/p>\n<p> <b>Why is an 80-year-old board game in the news?<\/b> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-21153\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/cluedo-DSC02468.jpg\" alt=\"Cluedo memorabilia \" width=\"1080\" height=\"720\"  \/>Credit: Birmingham City Council <\/p>\n<p>In November, the daughter of the creators of Cluedo, Marcia Davies, commemorated its invention in Birmingham by <strong>depositing items connected to the iconic murder mystery board game into the city\u2019s collection<\/strong>. Items included were games, photos, letters and memorabilia. <\/p>\n<p>The items are <strong>now stored in the Birmingham Archive service<\/strong>, but are available for the public to access by searching reference number MS 5201 in the Wolfson Centre for Archival Research on the Library of Birmingham\u2019s 4th floor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI feel strongly that these items connected with the origins of Cluedo belong in Birmingham and that, for a number of reasons, Cluedo only exists because of Birmingham,\u201d said Marcia. \u201cAfter 80 years, it\u2019s high time these documents came home.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Alexander Lyashkov, Unsplash Save Be it boredom or fear, when the WWII air raids hit Birmingham, Anthony&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,393,4884,22505,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-622444","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-mystery","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115690401188509583","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}