Trivial Pursuit inventors

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Robert Richardson

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MOMENT IN TIME: DECEMBER 15, 1979

NW-MIT-TRIVIAL-PURSUIT-1214
Trivial Pursuit inventors, former journalists Chris Haney, left, his brother John Haney and Scott Abbott, right, play their board game based on trivial questions at their Canadian distributors in Toronto, February 2, 1984. RICK EGLINTON/UPC
Montreal journalists invent Trivial Pursuit
On the night of Saturday, Dec. 15, 1979, two newspapermen sat down at their house in Montreal to play a game of Scrabble. “This must be the sixth Scrabble game I’ve bought,” said Chris (Horn) Haney, a picture editor at the Montreal Gazette, in a story repeated enough to become legend. Then, considering how much money there was to be made in such things, he added, “Why don’t we invent a game?” Asked what it would be about, his friend and roommate Scott (Scooter) Abbott, a sportswriter with The Canadian Press, replied: “Trivia.” Within the hour, the two had sketched out the basics of Trivial Pursuit, a board game that would soon become a billion-dollar business and cultural icon. “We’re a generation so bombarded with information every day that our knowledge is very fragmented, and a game dealing with those fragments is in keeping with the spirit of the times,” said newspaper editor Joseph Vitale in a news story about the game in 1984, as it exploded into the American market. Trivial Pursuit had, by then, already sold by the millions and grown to numerous editions – and continued to be in demand at stores around the continent. Jana G. Pruden

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