Our step-by-step guide to the rules of how to play Trivial Pursuit Board Game. This is the gold standard of trivia games that has been around for 30+ years. This is a pure trivia game that will test your knowledge across categories of Geography, Entertainment, History, Arts & Literature, Science & Nature, and Sports & Leisure. Learning how to play Trivial Pursuit is very easy and following these steps will have you waste deep in trivia in no time.
FOR MORE: Trivial Pursuit Page | Games Like Trivial Pursuit | Buy Trivial Pursuit on Amazon
HOW TO PLAY TRIVIAL PURSUIT – WHAT IS IT?
Gather friends and family to play the trivia game that started it all! The Trivial Pursuit Classic Edition game features the classic gameplay that you know and love. Great for game night, this game contains 2,400 questions in 6 categories.
Players take turns rolling a 6-sided die and moving around a circle trying to collect colored pie wedges for your game piece. You choose the direction you want to go in but the color you land on is the category of question you will need to answer. If it is a regular space, getting it correct lets you answer again, but if it is a special space, a correct answer gets you a wedge of that color. Once you collect a wedge of each color, you can head to the center and answer one final question to win the game.
HOW TO PLAY TRIVIAL PURSUIT – STEP BY STEP
Time Needed: Approximately 90 – 180 minutes.
This is a step by step guide for how to play Trivial Pursuit the classic trivia master board game. Additional notions and special rules can be found below the list. These will be referenced for your convenience.
1. SETUP | Put Out Game Board
To kick off how to play Trivial Pursuit setup, you start by putting out the game board. Unfold it and place it in the center of everyone.
2. SETUP | Put Out Question Cards
Take the stack of question cards and put them in an accessible place to be accessed throughout the game.
3. SETUP | Take Player Starting Wedges
Each player chooses a player wedge of one of the available colors. Everyone places their circle piece in the center of the game board to start. This is the last step of how to play Trivial Pursuit set up before getting into gameplay.
4. SETUP | Choose Starting Player
Each player rolls the 6-sided dice. The high roll is the starting player. Keep re-rolling to settle any ties.
5. GAMEPLAY | Roll Die & Move
The active player rolls the one six sided die and moves this many spaces. You can choose to go in any direction you like but you then have to move all spaces in that chosen direction (no back and forth). If you land on a “roll again” space, repeat this process. Do this until you land on a color space.
6. GAMEPLAY | Answer Question
One of your opponents grabs a question card and they read you the trivia question of the category you landed on. If you get it right, you continue, if you get it wrong your turn is over.
7. GAMEPLAY | Taking A Wedge Piece
Some of the spots on the board have big wedges of the different colors. These are the wedge spaces. If you get a question correct while on one of these spaces, you get a wedge piece of that color to add to your circle piece. You can only get each color once. The goal is to keep going long enough to collect one of each color.
8. GAMEPLAY | Pass & Repeat
Once someone answers a question wrong, their turn is over. Once this happens, the turn moves to the player on the left and they repeat this process. This continues until someone wins.
9. WINNING | Answer One Final Question
Once a player has collected one wedge piece of each color (completing their circle), they then must keep going until they can land perfectly on the center spot on the board. When they do, they answer a final question. When they get this right, they win the game. If they get it wrong they have to keep landing on the same space until they get it right. The actual how to play Trivial Pursuit is easy, it is knowing the trivia that is hard.
HOW TO PLAY TRIVIAL PURSUIT – KEY INFORMATION
SHORT GAME VARIATION
Determine before you begin that you will collect just four or five wedges (instead of getting the full six) before moving to the hub for the final, game-winning question.
NOTES ON PLAY
Players will collectively decide how long a person has to answer a question, and how specific the answer must be. For example, is a last name enough, or must the player give both the first and last name. You are not required to give the explanatory information that appears in parentheses after some answers.
Players should remember that making a guess is always better than not answering at all. Players often amaze themselves with what they know!
The Trivial Pursuit game lends itself well to team play for as many as 24 players. Dispense those considered strong in various categories amongst teams. Teammates decide how a question should be answered; to avoid confusion, the team captain should give each answer.
All Trivial Pursuit games may be played with cards from other editions. The colored ovals on the question-and-answer cards are always arranged in the same order to accommodate interchangeable play.
GAME CONTENTS
- 1x Game Board
- 1x Die
- 1x Rule Book
- 6x Player Tokens
- 36x Scoring Wedges
- 2x Boxes Question and Answer Cards
HOW TO PLAY TRIVIAL PURSUIT – IN CLOSING
We hope you can now say you know how to play Trivial Pursuit. This vintage game that originated in 1981 is still the gold standard for broad trivia games. There is not much too it besides answering questions but that is the point. You will need to be a master across the Geography, Entertainment, History, Arts &Literature, Science & Nature, and Sports & Leisure categories in order to win. Now that you have learned the very simple how to play Trivial Pursuit rules, go out there and prove you are a trivia master!
