The Herald Sport is holding a tournament bracket to find the best board game of all time. Vote below in the semifinal matchups and stay tuned to nzherald.co.nz/sport throughout the week as the tournament progresses based on your votes.
And then there were four.
As we draw closer to the end of lockdown (maybe), our appetite for bubble competitions has stayed strong with over 20,000 votes cast in the battle for New Zealand's favourite board game.
Before we get into the quarter-final results and semifinal voting, here's some board game fun facts you never knew you needed.
10 very important fun facts about board games that you definitely need to know
1. The longest Monopoly game ever went on for 70 days.
2. In the original UK version of Cluedo, Mr. Green was called Reverend Green, a hypocritical Anglican priest who wavers when the subject is murder. However, when the Parker Brothers took the game to the U.S., they changed "Rev. Green" to "Mr. Green" as they believed Americans would object to a man of the cloth as a murder suspect.
3. In the 1970s, BP released a bizarre board game called "Offshore Oil Strike". In the ridiculous game, players raced to be the first to collect $120 million as they navigated the "thrills of drilling, the hazards and the rewards". And of course, the fantasy rig could explode – a chilling foreshadowing of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
4. During World War 2, the Nazis allowed Allied prisoners of war to play board games – how nice of them! One of the games sent was Monopoly. But inside one of the board games sent by British intelligence were tools for escape. The British government hid real cash among the Monopoly money as well as compasses, metal files and a map. And it worked. The soldiers managed to escape.
5. The highest possible scoring words in Scrabble, if you manage to get the right triple word and double letter tiles, are NETZAHUALCOYOTL and CZECHOSLOVAKIAN.
6. It is impossible to use a particular swear word in Boggle, with the designers purposely preventing the letters F and K from ever appearing together.
7. According to an urban legend, David Bowie invented Connect Four. However, it was made up by an English radio DJ.
8. The original Game of Life featured spaces for poverty, prison, disgrace and suicide. Fun!
9. The tallest Jenga tower ever was 40 levels tall plus two more blocks on top, according to Hasbro.
10. The first non-human to win a World Chess Championship was a computer named Deep Blue.
The quarter-final results
Board games bracket semifinals.
George Parker conference
1. Monopoly vs 4. The Game of Life
Monopoly continues on its rampage in the tournament, swatting aside Life with 82 per cent of the votes.
Cluedo becomes the first lower seed to topple over a favourite, taking out Risk in a convincing victory. Cluedo moves on with 63 per cent of the votes and will meet Monopoly in the George Parker conference final.
Charles Parker conference
1. Chess vs 4. Jenga
Jenga put up an early fight, but it was no match for Chess in the end who claimed the win with 65 per cent of the votes.
3. Pictionary vs 2. Scrabble
Scrabble moves on in perhaps the biggest matchup of the round with 63 per cent. It'll be Scrabble vs Chess in the other semi.
