Makes people disappear

Way before The X Files, partwork magazines like The Unexplained and telly shows like The Crazy World Of Arthur C. Clarke (he invented satellites, you know) cashed in on our periodic fascination for paranormal phenomena¹, although it was actually Charles Berlitz who wrote a book in 1974 called “The Bermuda Triangle”. That renewed interest, perhaps also spurred on by the Barry Manilow hit of the same name, made this a very popular game in the early ‘80s.

Yet even at a young age, when our experience of triangles was limited to early maths lessons, school band practice and Quality Street², we spotted the one thing lacking from this game. The board was square. The cloud was, erm, acoustic guitar shaped (and we’d love to have been in on the design meeting for that one). And even the “shipping route” around the game was just some random meandering.

That aside (and ignoring the very fundamental imprudence in setting up a merchant shipping operation in the middle of an area renowned for strange disappearances), it was a fun game. Move your fleet around the board, trading for bananas, oil, timber and sugar, and try to avoid the ominous, foreboding magnetic cloud that wants to eat your ships. Simple.

Various “spoiler” tactics could be employed (blocking your fellow players’ ships from each dock) but none was more effective than bribing whoever was moving the cloud to spin it just that bit too fast, thus preventing the ominous “click” of magnet on magnet and keeping you in the game for another go. Many Top Trumps and sticker collections would inexplicably vanish under the table when the Bermuda Triangle rolled into town.

Incidentally, theories that the strange occurrences of the real Bermuda Triangle are caused by aliens sucking planes and boats out of the sky with giant magnets have not yet been disproved.