Which board game made multimillionaires out of four Canadians? The correct answer is Trivial Pursuit, the bestselling brainteaser that went on to outsell Monopoly.
But a Cape Breton plumber, David Wall of Sydney, says he alone invented the game, but his idea was swiped during a hitchhiking misadventure 27 years ago.
Tomorrow Mr. Wall's lawsuit against Canada's board-game barons is set to begin in a Nova Scotia Supreme Court in Cape Breton.
At stake are the millions of dollars the game has earned since it hit the market in 1982. It's estimated the game's owners have each earned $50-million from the game, which is played in 33 countries and 19 languages.
The lawsuit has a twist. Before striking it rich with Trivial Pursuit, the Canadian inventors were middle-class, working men -- not unlike Mr. Wall -- whose life stories could have been lifted from the pages of a beer commercial script. When their board game turned golden, their rags-to-riches saga captivated Canadians.
Mr. Wall alleges that the idea for a game about trivia, replete with pie markers and thousands of questions, was his. His mistake, he said, was confiding his concept to one of the game owners, Chris Haney, who gave him a ride one day in 1979 outside Sydney.
"They took his idea and lied at every step of the way afterward," said Mr. Wall's lawyer, Kevin MacDonald, a childhood friend of Mr. Wall's. "He's entitled to it all."
The game's owners deny Mr. Wall's allegations, saying his story is a fantastical invention. They say Mr. Haney never met Mr. Wall and wasn't in Cape Breton at the time.
Mr. Wall's story has changed time and again, the owners' lawyer Mick Ryan, said, a sure sign that the plaintiff made up a story to milk the true inventors of their deserved wealth.
"There is a complete and absolute total denial of every claim," Mr. Ryan said.
" . . . He's amended his statement of claim at least four if not five times. He has switched dates four if not five times."
Discrediting the story of how Trivial Pursuit was made won't be easy. Countless newspaper and television stories have documented the men's saga. Time magazine called Trivial Pursuit the "biggest phenomenon in game history." The game's origins are on a Canadian government website.
According to the owners, the idea for the game was hatched by Mr. Haney and his friend, Scott Abbott, both Montreal newsmen. Both were devoted board-game players and the eureka moment occurred during a Scrabble game in December, 1979.
"I said: "Why don't we invent a game of our own?' " Mr. Haney told the CBC in 1982. Mr. Abbott replied: "What could it be about?" Mr. Haney said: "Trivia."
The pair took on two more business partners; Mr. Haney's brother John, a former hockey player, and Ed Werner, a corporate lawyer. It took two years to compose the 6,000 questions used in the first edition, and there were setbacks drumming up investors. The first copies sold at a loss, but in 1982, it was introduced into the U.S. market and sales skyrocketed.
At no time did Mr. Haney talk about a trivia game with a man in Cape Breton, Mr. Ryan said.
"I have a motto and the motto is simple: Truth will prevail. And the one thing about facts is that they're very stubborn. You can never get around it. The facts are the facts are the facts."
Mr. Wall's story is sharply different. Even his lawyer admits it's far-fetched. But Mr. MacDonald said the case will boil down to who the judge believes. "Either David Wall is the biggest kook or what he's saying is the truth," Mr. MacDonald said. "And Wall is no kook."
The Cape Breton man said that he and a friend were hitchhiking and were picked up by Mr. Haney outside Sydney in 1979. During the short drive, Mr. Wall alleges that Mr. Haney told him he was always on the lookout for new ideas, which prompted Mr. Wall to spill his idea for a game of trivia.
Mr. Wall said Mr. Haney was interested and pulled his car off the road to talk about it at length. When they parted ways, Mr. Wall said Mr. Haney promised to keep in touch about the idea.
He said Mr. Haney called about 18 months later to say he was taking the idea to market and asked Mr. Wall if he wanted to invest. Mr. Wall said he declined, saying he wanted to be named as the sole inventor.
But Mr. Wall's version of events has changed over the years.
At first, he claimed the Cape Breton meeting occurred in 1979, then he changed it to December, 1980. However, Mr. Haney was in Spain at that time, and Mr. Wall eventually switched the date back to 1979.
The trial is expected to last eight months with more than 30 witnesses. The first one scheduled for tomorrow is Mr. Wall's mother.