After-dinner Agatha Christie

Cluedo seemed to appear out of nowhere as some murdery-mystery rival to Monopoly. The posh kids had it first, probably because it featured a “study” and a “drawing room” but it wasn’t long before the whole street was testing their detective skills with plastic tools of death and cards that you had to keep in little wallets like After Eight Mints.

Essentially a glorified board version of 20 Questions (just keep asking until you guess whodunit, where-they-dunit and with what) but featuring murder, it stirred the nascent serial killer in many a small child¹. Show us a grown-up who claims they didn’t secretly want to see Mrs White bludgeoned to death with the lead pipe in the bedroom and we’ll show you a suspiciously new-looking patio out in their back yard. (Of course, this almost-amusing observation conveniently ignores the fact that the actual murder victim – Dr Black - couldn’t simultaneously be one of the players.)

Quite where the stereotype characters were drawn from remains unexplained, though we suspect some play on words implicit in Mrs Peacock and Col. Mustard. And whilst it must be said that both Rev. Green and Professor Plum weren’t exactly marketed as teen heartthrobs, Miss Scarlet stirred more than just violent urges - appearing as she did on the cards as a bright red pawn with a mane of flowing blonde hair and a saucy, yet sophisticated smile. Thinking about it, any game that prompted a pre-pubescent sexual frisson from a chess piece, and that educated young Crippens as to which household items could best be used to kill, should probably have come with some form of parental advisory warning. But this was in the good old pre-PC days, so we had free rein to don our imaginary balaclavas and go a-garrotting. With the length of rope. In the kitchen.

¹Another crime is the literal bludgeoning the Cluedo franchise has taken in the past decade, with the original game beaten to fit into travel, card, PC, junior and Simpsons-branded varieties (“Homer, in the nuclear power station, with a doughnut. D’oh!” we don’t doubt). Hasbro have also recently introduced a nostalgia edition (whatever that means), which comes in a wooden box. Which is where we’d have to be before you’ll find us playing the animated
Cluedo DVD Game - a version that surely removes the need for players to even talk to one another?