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The board game's inventor was a British law clerk named Anthony
Pratt, who dreamt it up circa 1947, while walking his beat as a
wartime fire warden in Leeds. When the bombs weren't dropping,
social sets used to gather in one another's homes for a parlor game
called "Murder", in which guests would creep around and
simulate the murder of one of their own. That was the seed, and
Pratt came up with rest.
Profits from the popular game allowed Pratt to become a pianist,
his long-time dream. But just like the mysteries that his game
hinges on, Pratt fell out of sight late in the twentieth century. In
1994, Waddington's Games, the present day owners of Cluedo tried to
track Pratt down to celebrate the game's 50th anniversary. They
didn't have a clue where to look until a cemetery official in
central England used a special investigation hotline number and told
Waddington's officials that there was one Anthony Pratt buried there
a few years prior. His tombstone read "Inventor of
Cluedo". Case closed.
In the mid 1950's, Pratt sold his game's rights to Waddington's.
In the U.S., the game was re-named Clue" and marketed by Parker
Brothers, now under the Hasbro umbrella. The game has sold over a
hundred and fifty million copies and still lurks in the Top-10 of
annual board game sales. It has inspired a rompy spin-off film in
1985 (made with three different endings), a popular CD-ROM, and has
led probably not a few players to consider a career in the detective
arts.
To play Cluedo/Clue you needed only to know a bit about the
malfeasance. When a handful of guests gathered at a Victorian
mansion, their host was murdered.
There were six suspects (Professor Plum, Mrs. Peacock, Miss
Scarlet, Mrs. White, Mr. Green and Colonel Mustard), six murder
weapons (lead pipe, wrench, knife, rope, candlestick, revolver),
nine rooms and 324 possible combinations of the crime.
Cards which designated a murderer, a weapon, or a crime scene
location were secretly selected at the beginning of the game, and
placed in the 'Murder Envelope'. The rest of the cards were divided
up, each player chose a suspect to be, then rolled the dice to move
through the mansion. Upon entering a room, the player made
suggestions as to the murder scenario, and if they held any of the
suggested information, other players revealed their cards - to the
interrogator only.
Players noted the results of their Q&A on their handy
detective notepads, making very sure no one stole a glance at their
deductions. And if someone cared to throw other players off the
scent, he could misdirect the poor devils by suggesting scenarios
only he knew to be impossible.
When a player finally felt confident solving the whodunit, he
jotted down his guess and took a private look at the murder
envelope's contents. If he was wrong, the game was over for him, and
the other suspects carried on. If he was right, he wore the crown of
"Super Sleuth" - at least until the next game. Though
Cluedo/Clue players have never known why the host was killed (the
villain's "motive" in sleuth parlance), everyone in the
mansion looked very suspicious indeed.
Ms. Scarlet was the vampy femme fatale, Colonel Mustard was huffy
and monocled, Mrs. White was the resident maid - so it's possible
she was just fed up with her vocational choice, Professor Plum
looked dangerously booksmart, Mrs. Peacock looked dangerously snooty
and Mr. Green, well . . . female players always had crushes on Mr.
Green, and though he looked too cute to do something as dastardly as
commit murder, one just never knew.
Playing Cluedo/Clue was a cutthroat business (perhaps literally,
if the knife was the weapon of choice), and it remains so more than
50 years after the game's invention. It takes high-rolling and good
interrogation skills, and if you're especially savvy, maybe a little
reverse psychology. Of course, for the dirty players out there it
was always easier just to distract everyone while getting a sneak
peak at the cards before they made their way in the sealed envelope.
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