Revealed: New Jersey’s top five favorite board games

• Chess is New Jersey’s favorite board game, with an average of 17,322 monthly Google searches.
• Checkers is second with 7,506 average monthly searches, while Monopoly is third with 5,163 average monthly searches.
• Mancala is fifth with 1,684 average monthly searches

A new study has revealed that chess is New Jersey’s favorite board game.

Online game website World of Card Games analyzed the number of Google searches for 605 board games to determine which one is New Jersey’s favorite. Each game’s name was combined with terms such as ‘board game,’ ‘how to play,’ and ‘rules’ to determine the interest in each game.

1. Chess

Chess tops the list for New Jersey’s favorite board game, with an average of 17,322 monthly searches.

Chess is played on an 8×8 grid of alternating dark and light-colored squares, with each side having eight pawns and eight special pieces to checkmate their opponent. Traditionally, chess sets have one set of white or light-colored pieces, and one set of black or dark-colored pieces.

The goal in Chess is to capture your opponent’s king through a checkmate, which is achieved by positioning your pieces where the opponent’s king cannot make any legal moves without being able to be captured on the next turn.

Chess has always been popular, but it has seen a massive resurgence in popularity in recent years as people embrace this ancient game. Chess originated in India in the sixth century AD and has spread all over the world since then.

2. Checkers

Checkers is New Jersey’s second favorite board game, with an average of 7,506 monthly searches.

Checkers is also played on an 8×8 grid of alternating dark and light-colored squares like chess; however, each side starts with 12 pieces placed only on the dark-colored squares in the first three rows of the board. Usually, the pieces are colored black for dark pieces and red or white for light-colored pieces.

All of the pieces can only move diagonally forward to begin with, but they gain the ability to move backward by getting promoted to a king if they reach the other side of the board. The goal of checkers is to capture all of your opponent’s pieces or force them into a position where they cannot move any pieces.

Checkers is another ancient game, with variations dating from 3000 BC. However, the exact origins of what is known as checkers or draughts today are debated, with the consensus that a form of modern checkers had been established by the 13th century.

3. Monopoly

Monopoly is third for New Jersey’s favorite board game, with an average of 5,163 monthly searches.

Monopoly is played on a square board with numerous sets of properties for players to acquire and develop. Each player takes turns to roll two dice and either purchase the property that is landed on or pay rent to the landlord of the property upon which they have landed. The goal of Monopoly is to acquire and develop as much property as possible to force other players to pay rent and go bankrupt.

A player can develop a property to extract more rent from opponents after purchasing all the properties in a colored set. Once a full set has been acquired, the player can buy houses to place on them, which can be upgraded to a hotel after four houses have been placed.

Monopoly evolved from The Landlord’s Game which was created as a criticism of capitalism. Monopoly continued this critique of capitalism and was created in 1932, with a patent in 1935.

4. Clue (Cluedo)

With 3,322 average monthly searches, Clue is fourth for New Jersey’s favorite board game.

Also referred to as Cluedo outside of North America, Clue is a murder mystery game where players try to solve the murder of the game’s victim. Players will try to determine who committed the murder, where it was committed, and what was the murder weapon.

The game is played on a board representing the mansion in which the murder took place. At the start of the game, three cards representing the murderer, the murder weapon, and the room in which the murder took place are placed in a sealed envelope. Players then take turns exploring the mansion and making accusations in the room they think the murder took place. The game is won when one player makes the correct accusation after determining this through the process of elimination.

Cluedo was invented in the United Kingdom during World War Two, with a patent granted in 1947 and eventual release in 1949.

5. Mancala

At fifth for New Jersey’s favorite board game is mancala, with an average of 1,684 monthly searches.

Another ancient game, mancala is played on a board marked with holes or pits and is played with small counters or stones referred to as seeds. A common variant of a mancala board consists of two rows of six pits with two large pits or mancalas at either end. At the start of the game, all of the small pits are filled with the same number of seeds. The aim of mancala is for a player to have more seeds in their mancala at the end of the game than their opponent.

The aim of mancala is for a player to have more seeds in their mancala at the end of the game than their opponent. Players achieve this by taking turns to remove all seeds from a pit on their side of the board, then placing one seed in each of the pits to the right of that pit (referred to as sowing), continuing counterclockwise through the mancala to the other side of the board if necessary. If the last seed placed is in an empty pit on that player’s side of the board, the seeds opposite that pit are captured and placed in that player’s mancala.

Mancala is one of the oldest games still to be actively played today, with forms of the game being discovered dating back to around 5870 BC. The origin of modern mancala dates back to 700 AD in East Africa.

A spokesperson speaking on behalf of World of Card Games commented on the findings:

“Chess is a cultural touchstone, with terms such as checkmate being a staple of the English language. It has been studied for centuries, and skill at the game is considered shorthand for a person’s intelligence. It has even seen a new wave of popularity in recent years as more people learn of its intricacies. It is fitting then that chess is New Jersey’s most popular board game.

“It will be interesting to see if chess continues to grow in popularity in the coming years and how that might impact how people play the game online and offline, both professionally and at the amateur level.”

Table showing the most searched board games in New Jersey

Table showing the top 5 most searched board games in each state and America overall

If using this story, please credit and link to: https://worldofcardgames.com/

Source: Google Keyword Planner

Methodology: As many board games as possible were gathered. Then, using search volume data for the US, the games were combined with the terms ‘game,’ ‘online,’ ‘board game,’ ‘how to play,’ and ‘rules’ and run through Google Keyword Planner to see which game generates the most searches for those topics. 605 games were selected in total.