TABLETOP TIME MACHINE
CLUEDO/CLUE
Anthony Pratt (1903-1994) belied his name when it came to inventing one of the few classic games of the 20th century. Indeed, unlike such classics as Monopoly and Scrabble, whose forerunners go back to the 19th century, Cluedo was based on the hitherto unexplored ludic theme of deduction. Its central mechanism – that of deducing three missing cards by asking other players to show you whether or not they hold one of them – makes it, strictly speaking, a card game rather than a board game. The only technical purpose of the board is to make the game last longer by requiring you to move to the room in which you claim the murder to have been committed. You could play perfectly well without this restriction, but then the game simply wouldn’t be half as much fun.