Playing board-games is great fun and a lovely pastime. One of the most famous among them is Trivial Pursuit. Chris Haney and Scott Abbott invented it in 1979. Trivial Pursuit was finally launched in 1981 and started its triumphal procession all around the world. It is now sold in at least 19 different languages spread over 33 countries.
It is a great game and I do love playing it. Everybody is eager to answer the imaginative questions and to collect the sought-after plastic pie slices. Everybody has his favourite area of questions and therefore his favourite color, as every of the six question areas is expressed through a distinct color. But the inventors made one big mistake which they never really eliminated.
Have you ever played Trivial Pursuit with a colorblind? It is still fun but sometimes it degenerates to a color guessing and asking game. The six different colors used to reflect the six different question areas are definitely not well chosen for people affected by a color vision deficiency.
Imagine the following two different situations are reoccurring all the time during the game.
Not-Colorblind: “Wrong. You are on brown.”
Colorblind: “Oh no. Come on, this is green.”
Not-Colorblind: “No, definitely not.”
Colorblind: “Ok. Let me move again. I hate brown questions.”
Not-Colorblind: “Ok. Last time.”
Colorblind: “Thanks.” (Move) “Now, ask me the green question.”
Not-Colorblind: “Ohm, sorry. But this time you landed on orange…”
This was the first situation which happens all the time to me. I’m constantly asking if I got the colors right or if I mixed them up again.
In second situation the roles are swaped. But it is therefore not less common than the one described above.
Not-Colorblind: “Stop, stop. It is not blue. It is pink.”
Colorblind: “Yes? Oh yes. I want to kid me again.”
Not-Colorblind: “No. Honestly, it is pink and not blue.”
Colorblind: “But last time you told me differently.”
Not-Colorblind: “Who is having problems with colors here?”
Colorblind: “Ok, ok. Next time I’m going to mark every single field…”
As I said, I really like this game very much and we quite often play it. But I would like it even more if they had chosen better colors or some kind of patterns which can be easily told apart from each other.
There are many different editions of Trivial Pursuit. Maybe there is even one where they have chosen another color strategy. Did you ever play such a colorblind-sensitive one?
Further readings:
Canada Heirloom Series: Trivial Pursuit
Wikipedia: Trivial Pursuit
Related articles:
Japan’s Public Facilities Making Life Easier for Colorblind
Bread Wrapped Up In Colors
Imagine the Green is Red
I’m a fan also and I annoy everyone by asking. Is that the green or brown square. Do you have the green or brown wedge.
Bad, but not quite as bad as trying to play snooker in a badly lit room.
It doesn’t even have to be badly lit. For me snooker goes like this: “Which is the next one?” “Pink” “And which IS the pink one?”… and so on…
In normal light its only green and brown I confuse with the reds. So I just try to keep track of where they go from the start. One of the reasons I much prefer playing pool.