Each Christmas the board games come out in our house! One old favourite which we have been playing for over 20 years is Trivial Pursuit. We have bought DVD and game console versions of the game but I don't think the original board game can be beaten.

There are many types of this game to be found including a junior edition, tv edition and editions focusing on certain years or decades but we have the Genus Edition in a box like the one pictured. We have bought a couple of boxes of new questions over the years. The price of the game seems to vary dramatically from £7 or £8 for a used game up to £60-70 for a collectible edition.

The game was created in 1981 and released in 1982. Some of the original questions were a bit difficult for the younger players which is why we bought some new cards. When it's us oldies playing we still like to have a go with the original cards.

The game can be played individually or in teams, when the kids were younger we used to play in teams to make it easier for them but these days we play individually. You can play with between 2 and 6 players or teams.
Each player or team chooses a coloured pie. In this pie are 6 holes to place your wedges. You need to have a wedge of each colour to complete your pie, each colour represents a different category. Blue is Geography, Orange is Sport & Leisure, Brown is Art & Literature, Green is Science & Nature, Yellow is History and Pink represents Entertainment. There are thousands and thousands of questions as each card contains a question and answer from each category.

You need to roll a die and move your empty pie the amount of spaces shown on the die, you may choose the direction so you can choose between a couple of categories to receive a question on. There are 6 large coloured spaces on the board which represent the 'wedge' questions, one for each coloured wedge. If you land on this space and correctly answer the question in that category you receive a wedge to place in your counter. When all 6 have been collected you must try and roll to reach the center of the board where the opposition can choose a category to question you on. If you answer correctly you will have won the game.
Your turn keeps going until you answer a question incorrectly which means if somebody is really good their turn could last quite some time. Your turn ends when you collect a wedge though which means one player couldn't finish before others get a chance to answer questions.

I think because of the varied categories this game is really good and fair because there's always one category somebody is really going to want to avoid.
Also with having to end on the center space it could take a long time to roll the correct number to reach this space.

The length of the game depends on how many are playing and how good they are at answering the questions. We normally get a good couple of hours out of a game when there are a few playing and we always get a good laugh out of some of the ridiculous guesses people make at the answer.

We have found this game much better since purchasing extra question cards as the older ones were too hard for the younger bunch to know. The more recent questions makes it fairer and a better game to be enjoyed by all ages.

Although the electronic versions for this game are good there's nothing like the satisfaction you get of physically placing your little plastic wedge into the counter! This game is definitely of my family and one I would recommend.