By Brad Cook
“What was Sherlock Holmes’ home county?” No, not country; that’s Britain. What was the English county of his birth? You eye the three choices in front of you: Essex, Surrey, and Yorkshire. If you get the answer right, you’ll earn the final wedge required to fill your playing piece. Then you’ll only need to land on the center tile and answer a random question to win the game.
Inspiration strikes — you recall a dish you enjoyed during a trip to the U.K. — and you select the correct answer. From the Arts & Literature headquarter tile, you need to move just six spaces to reach the center tile. One roll of the die could take you there. Time to see if you can win without giving your opponent another turn.
Two Ways to Play
Trivial Pursuit on the iPod recreates that classic board game with 1,000 questions spread across six categories: Geography, Arts & Literature, Sports & Leisure, Science & Nature, Entertainment, and History. In Classic mode, move your circular piece around the board, rolling again each time you answer a question correctly. Before starting, decide if you want to earn a wedge only on a category’s headquarter tile or at any tile. You can also choose how many wedges are needed to win (from one to six) and select one of three difficulty levels for your computer opponent. Up to four human opponents can engage in a battle of knowledge with the pass-and-play option.
Competition against human opponents is also available in Pursuit mode, in which you must reach the finish line as fast as possible by answering questions in rapid-fire succession. How far you move before your next question depends on how quickly you give the correct answer; a wrong one, or no answer, only allows you to move one square. At the finish line, you earn a bronze, silver, or gold medal and unlock the next level.
Pursuit mode also features special tiles not found in Classic mode:
- Move Bonus: A correct answer lets you move two extra tiles.
- Category Chooser: Select which category of question you want.
- Time Bonus: Get 10 extra seconds to answer.
- Springboard: A correct answer bounces you to another tile.
- Safe Question: One of the three answer choices is eliminated.
Between games, peruse your career statistics, including accuracy rates and number of questions answered in all six categories, the number of tiles traveled, your longest streak of correct answers, and more. At last you’ll be glad you spent so much time on Wikipedia; just don’t use it to cheat.
The History of Trivial Pursuit (There Will Be a Quiz Later)
Photo editor Chris Haney and sports journalist Scott Abbott invented Trivial Pursuit in December, 1979 while playing Scrabble. Two years later, 1,100 copies of the game were published and sold in Canada at a steep loss: each game was sold to stores for $15, but manufacturing costs were $75 per copy. In 1983, game maker Selchow and Righter licensed the game and quickly turned it into a success, with 20 million copies sold in the United States alone the following year. By 2004, nearly 88 million copies had been during the previous 20 years.
Parker Brothers, which was later acquired by Hasbro, licensed Trivial Pursuit in 1988; two decades later, Haney, Abbott, and their business partners sold all rights to Hasbro for $80 million. In 1993, “Games” magazine named the game to its Hall of Fame.
The original version of Trivial Pursuit was dubbed the Genus Edition. It has been revised over the years, but other editions have seen print too, including ones aimed at children, fans of certain movies, such as “Star Wars,” and more. There have also been “Totally ‘80s” and “90’s” editions, along with supplemental card sets. It has been turned into a TV game show three times — from 1993 to 1995, in 2008, and in 2004, as “ESPN Trivial Pursuit” — and its creation was humorously depicted in a 1988 made-for-TV movie.
iPod Games FAQ
Do you have questions regarding any of the iPod games available from the iTunes Store?
Music, Movies, and TV, Oh My! Red is about to land on the Entertainment category headquarter tile.
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- Site: Trivial Pursuit
- Publisher: Apple Inc.
- Developer: Electronic Arts
- Genre: Cards, Casino, & Board
More iPod Games
System Requirements
- Mac OS X version 10.3.9 or Windows 2000
- iPod nano (3rd and 4th generation only), iPod classic, or iPod (5th generation only). Not playable on your computer, other iPod models, iPod touch or iPhone. Please check which iPod model you have.
- iTunes 7.5 or higher required to download (games cannot be played in iTunes)