Book Review: Winning Streak-Tales and Trivia of the 40 Most Popular Board Games by John-Michael Gariepy

Having played board games since I was a child, and being a huge Scrabble nerd, I was interested in reading John-Michael Gariepy’s book Winning Streak: Tales and Trivia of the 40 Most Popular Board Games. And I am happy to say Winning Streak is a run read and quite informative.

Winning Streak is filled with trivia and history of games played by both children and adults. Many of them familiar names.

There’s a good chance you played games like Chutes and Ladders, Operation, and Candyland as a wee one. These games are a fun way to introduce children to various games and remain beloved to this day. Other popular games you probably played with others include the Game of Life, Monopoly, and Trivial Pursuit. These games still have fans worldwide.

Gariepy also covers games of outwitting your opponent like Mastermind. He also mentions games based on popular culture like Game of Thrones and Battlestar Gallactica. And who can forget the iconic game Clue being made into a movie back in the 1980s?

There is even a game called Pandemic where players work together to end a horrific pandemic that is gripping the world. Too bad, that in the day, of Covid, so many people are falling down on the job. But I digress…

Being a Scrabble nerd, I was most interested in learning more about this game. Scrabble, which requires strategy, skill, and yes, a lot of luck was invented by Alfred M. Butts who came up with the game after he lost his job during the Great Depression. He initially called it Lexiko (which kind of sounds like a new software program). Mr. Butts couldn’t get anyone interested in the game, and Gariepy provides a copy of a rejection letter from Milton-Bradley.

Butts made some adjustments to the game, which eventually became the game we know today. And a friend of his came up with the idea of by using all seven tiles at once a player would get 50 extra points, called a Bingo.

I really liked learning about so many different games, some familiar, some not so. I believe Winning Streak is an excellent read on a topic that so many people treasure, playing games.