Wits and Wagers

Wits and Wagers is a trivia board game designed by Dominic Crapuchettes and Nate Heasley, first published by North Star Games in 2005 with a second edition in 2007, in which three to seven players or teams answer trivia questions with a numerical answer rather than a multiple choice or exact fact. After every player writes down a guess, the guesses are arranged in order on a betting board marked with odds similar to a horse race board, and players then wager chips on whichever guess, their own or another player's, they believe comes closest to the true answer without going over it. Payouts are based on the odds printed next to each guess, so a bet on a longshot number pays more than a bet on a favorite, and the player with the highest chip total after seven rounds wins. The format rewards reasoning about probable ranges and about how other players are likely to guess as much as it rewards raw trivia knowledge.