Facts in Five

Facts in Five, subtitled The Game of Knowledge, is a trivia game for two or more players designed in 1964 by Rick Onanian, drawing on the older parlor game Categories. Before each round the players agree on five categories and draw five letter tiles at random. Everyone then has five minutes to fill in a five-by-five grid, writing for every category-and-letter combination an answer that fits the category and starts with that letter. A complete game runs five rounds, with players scoring points for every valid answer they manage to write down, so both broad knowledge and quick recall under time pressure matter. The game was first published in 1964 by Advanced Ideas Co of Arlington, Massachusetts, then acquired by 3M in 1967 and passed on to Avalon Hill in 1976; after Avalon Hill closed in 1998 the rights moved to Hasbro, which did not keep it in print, before University Games issued a new edition in 2007. It plays one to five players in about thirty minutes and relies on general knowledge rather than chance.