The curious story behind the board game Cluedo

It used to be even more violent.

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This is my seventh inductee into the Attic of Fame, the home of seemingly normal people, places, or things with hidden oddities.

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My only role model as a child, outside of Rizzo from Grease, was Miss Scarlett from Cluedo. I loved this board game. Even though the premise of a violent murder is quite an odd choice for children. And it only got odder, the more I looked into it. How could the inventor have died penniless? Why do they have such weird weapons in the Japanese version? And why does the house have no downstairs toilet?

Beginnings

During World War II, Anthony E Pratt and his wife, Elva (no middle initial) Pratt, hadn’t had enough of death and so they invented Cluedo. Anthony was working in a factory in Birmingham, but he’d been a travelling musician before the war and witnessed murder mystery parlour games at country hotels in the golden era of murder mystery fiction. Still, who knows how he came up with the idea?

Weirdly, he had a close friend who’d invented the board game Buccaneer and so was able to introduce Anthony to the head of board game behemoth, Waddingtons. I think this makes Anthony a nepo-friend.

Luckily, Waddingtons liked it, but they had a few changes to make.

Making it less violent

They started with the name. Anthony and Elva had called it ‘Murder!’. As they didn’t like to beat around the bush. Waddingtons weren’t sure about this, what with World War II and it being a kid’s game and they changed it to Cluedo. A mash-up of the words ‘clue’ and ‘ludo’, the Latin word for ‘I play’.

(When it got sent to America, they didn’t like the fuddy-duddy Latin bit and just called it ‘Clue’.)

The original name wasn’t the only overly-violent bit needing a change. The first line-up of weapons included an axe, bomb, bottle of poison, hypodermic syringe and cudgel/bludgeon.

The board

They also got rid of the gun room and cellar on the board, which is based on a REAL HOUSE. An actual house that you could buy if you were rich and it were for sale. Tudor Close in Rottingdean, near Brighton.

It had been a hotel for a short while in the 1930s and 40s, so it’s likely that Anthony had played there, then tattooed the floor plans on his torso like Michael Schofield in Prison Break. He forgot to do the downstairs toilet, though. Unless it didn’t have one, which is weird as I’m not sure I’d prioritise a billiards room over this.

The hotel had been very popular and hosted parties attended by Cary Grant, Errol Flynn, Laurence Olivier and Bette Davis. Julie Andrews’ parents used to work there and as a child, Julie would sing to entertain the guests.

Tudor Close House and the famous visitors.

The penniless inventor

Cluedo became a worldwide success, selling over 140 million copies in forty countries. It’s not exactly the same everywhere, though. Like in Japan, three of the weapons are a suitcase, an iron and a shoe. I’m not sure if I’m more scared of a Morphy Richards TurboGlide or a brogue.

But Anthony did not see any of this foreign money. Waddingtons got him to sign over the international rights for £5000 in 1953.

Then the UK royalties ran out when his patent expired in the sixties. So he also didn’t get any money from the Cluedo film or TV series, which is fine, as I don’t think they made any.

I’m sure he wasn’t bitter about not becoming a multi-trillionaire like the inventor of Monopoly. And I’m basing that on him being interviewed once and saying he actually found the game quite dull.

Britain’s best-selling board game

It feels sad that he died with no money, as Cluedo is the fifth best-selling board game of all time and the only British board game in the top twenty best-selling list. Here are the strong country players if you’re interested:

America: Monopoly, Scrabble, Connect Four, Cranium, Pictionary, Mousetrap, Operation, Kerplunk, Boggle, Ticket to Ride, Hungry Hippos, Frustration and Twister. (Alright, America, calm down.)

Canada: Trivial Pursuit, Balderdash and Yahtzee. (I always thought Yahtzee was Japanese, but it was invented by a Canadian couple who played it on their boat and it was originally called the Yacht Game.)

Japan: Othello and Pop Up Pirate

France: Risk and Battleships (so aggressive!)

India: Chess

Romania: Rummikub

Germany: Catan

The Netherlands: Stratego

Israel: Guess Who?

I’m sure Britain can do better. What other crimes can we cover for a child’s board game? Kidnapping? Arson? Drug trafficking? There’s a gap in the market which needs to be filled.