Trivial Pursuit
It's from 1981, before you were born.
- Maker
- Horn Abbot / Hasbro
- Type
- Board game (trivia)
- Debuted
- 1981
- Note
- Dreamed up by two friends missing Scrabble pieces
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About
As of 2026, it's 45 years old.
Trivial Pursuit was invented in 1979 by two Canadian friends, Chris Haney and Scott Abbott, reportedly while griping over a Scrabble set with missing tiles and deciding they could make a better game. Launched in 1981, their trivia juggernaut became a phenomenon, the must-have game of the early '80s, and the reason every household suddenly owned a board with little pie wedges.
Collecting those colored 'pie pieces' by answering questions across categories made everyone feel briefly brilliant or deeply humbled, and the original 'Genus' edition's now-dated questions are a time capsule of 1981 knowledge.
Brainy, competitive, and pie-piece-collecting, Trivial Pursuit is the game two frustrated friends built that made knowing random facts the height of party glory.
