by Matt Kelly

Created on: June 18, 2010

Ever since I can remember trivial pursuit has been the centre of any of my family get togethers, as I'm the only one in my family who drinks it's generally play the pursuit or sit in slightly uncomfortable silence attempting to make small talk....trivial pursuit it is then.

For anyone who has never heard of TP before, it is a game played on a board with a maximum of six different players (there are six coloured moving counters).

You can also club together into teams, 2 lots of 3, 3 lots of 2 or if you've got one genius and five dullards you can go all Vs 1. While it is a board game you could just as easily play without it, if you've lost the board or more likely want to play it in cramped conditions (ie a plane journey) you can just assign each category a number on the dice, when that number is rolled a question on the corresponding topic is asked.

You can then decide what system you want to put in place for getting pie (or cheese) questions, something like rolling the same number twice in a row. These are questions that when answered correctly give the player a small plastic wedge to place in their counter, first to 6 and back into the middle of the board wins. Unless you're playing without the board then just first to 6 pie pieces would be fine.

The board looks a bit like the spoked wheel of a wagon. A large outer circle with spokes of single spaces leading to the middle. The wheel is comprised of a sequence of coloured squares with a 'pie' question dotted around every few squares.

What makes this game great is when you split off into teams, as there are six very different categories of question: Sport, geography, Science & Nature, Arts & Literature, Entertainment and History. It's great when a question comes up that appeals to your specialised topic, for me as I am an astronomer I always pray for science and nature, and more specifically a question about space. Then again I struggle with geography which is a subject my brother is very keen on, so providing you've got a balanced team you should have no troubles beating your relatives into submission.

This wouldn't be a very good board game if there wasn't at least a small degree of luck, while it's a lot less luck reliant than say monopoly or other such games it does use dice as a means of determining moves, so I've been involved in games where my team has actually answered more correct questions but have failed to land on the all important pie square and so have lost the game.

There are hundreds

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