In my thrift store and garage sale wanderings, I have found that there is no shortage of trivia games on America's shelves. Let me share about two of these, one actually predating Trivial Pursuit, that I recently picked up along with a used ukulele and a couple Allman Brothers albums.
The first is Trivial Detective by John N. Hansen Co., the creators of 221B Baker Street. At beginning of the game one of 25 cards is selected. At the top of the card are five trivia questions. Players race to discover the answers to these questions by traveling around a game board similar to that of Clue. Instead of the Parlor and the Conservatory, players throw a die and move to the Sports Arena, City Hall and ten other such sites, gathering clues and taking notes. Some clues come in two or three parts requiring a player to piece together various bits of information. For example, at the Hospital one may learn, " #1 Clue, part 1: _____ Happened One Night (Movie)," which combined with the Art Museum's, "#1 Clue, part 2: Only heavyweight champion to win the title four times," tells a player that Rho is a town in ITALY (It-Ali). This puzzle-solving aspect of the game is fun, and combined with the tension created by worrying that your opponents are getting the clues you want and making sense of the clue you don't understand, makes for an exciting race. In addition, there are Trivia Barrel spaces scattered about the board that can be used to gain extra turns or stymie one of your opponents. Landing on a Trivia Barrel gives you the option of answering or asking a random trivia question. A question book is provided, or, as the rules suggest, one may use questions from another source.
Answering the question correctly gives you another turn. Answering the question incorrectly sends you to the Trivia Barrel, a sort of trivia jail at the center of the board where you must stay until you answer a trivia question correctly or three turns have passed, whichever comes first. This is a good way to gain (or loose) some ground on an opponent you feel may be ahead of you. The first player who believes he has the correct answer to the five questions makes his way to the Finish square where he announces his answers. If he's right, he wins. If not, he's out and the other players finish without him. If there is only one other player in the game, the remaining player gets to peak at two clues in the clue book and then take his best shot at it. Whoever has the most right wins.
Our only complaint with Trivial Detective is that it is quite a chore looking up each clue, coded with a number that corresponds to the player's location on the board. The fact that we keep getting the clue-book and the trivia-barrel book confused, grabbing the wrong one when we want the other, could be easily solved by using cards from one of the hundreds of other trivia games I have brought home.
The other trivia game is one I used to have as a boy, and which, except for some cosmetic changes, is pretty much as I remember it. Go To the Head of the Class by Milton Bradley is marketed, as far as I can tell, as primarily a children's game. As a result, I nearly passed it up. I'm glad I didn't. In Go To the Head of the Class players start in the Language classroom. The players throw the dice to determine what language question will be asked. If answered incorrectly, the player's turn is over. If answered correctly, he moves ahead three spaces plus his class rank. So, if he's in first place he moves four, if in sixth place, nine. (There's a little chart included that makes this easier.)
This movement system works well for keeping last place players in the game, and first place players on their toes. After clearing the language classroom, players move on to Science, Arts & Music, Mathematics, History, Literature and Geography classrooms, culminating in the Final Exam room. There are also some Study Hall (general knowledge) questions that allow a player to opt-out of a subject in which they feel they are weak. The first player to make it through finals wins the game. Players will have to answer two or three questions correctly in each room before moving on. There are some spaces that allow players to advance farther than they normally would, but otherwise the play is pretty simple. One of the things I think is neat about this game (besides the attractive game board and my own sentimentality) is that the questions come in three different academic levels, student, scholar and graduate, allowing players of different age (or intelligence--snicker) to more equitably compete against each other. A student level science question might be, "What organ is the 'boss' of the body?" A graduate level, "Named after a type of fish, this kind of cloud formation resembles fish scales."
Both of these games offer a nice alternative to the classic fill-the-pie race. Go to the Head of the Class is less involved than Trivial Detective, offering less of an opportunity to screw your neighbor, but an equally exciting trivia contest. Both are definitely worth the few dollars I paid for them used. And, in my mind at least, Go to the Head of the Class is worth looking for new.
Thrift Stores are a phenomenal resource for game connoseurs looking for out-of-print games or bargains on recent releases other people have discarded. Thrift Store Gaming may become a recurring series in which games of yesteryear, often found in thrift shops and garage sales, are discussed and reviewed. Where Eulogy concerns out-of-print classics, Thrift Store Gaming is about older games you can pick up cheaply. If you've got a favorite older game you'd like to spread the word about, drop me a line and the space is yours.