Why (board game)

Why is a mystery themed board game published by Milton Bradley in 1958 and based on the anthology television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents; it went out of production some years later and survives today only in two box art variations that are otherwise identical in play. Two to four players aged twelve and up each take the role of a comically named amateur detective, among them Sergeant Monday, Dick Crazy, Charlie Clam, and Shylock Bones, and move around a board of six rooms by rolling dice while trying to acquire and trade cards. Six ghost characters modeled on historical figures such as Napoleon and Cleopatra are woven into the mystery, and each player is dealt a starting hand of seven cards from the remaining deck, distributed across the six rooms. To win, a player must collect one ghost card, one weapon card, drawn from rope, gun, poison, or ax, and one motive card that together solve their assigned case, proving ownership of the right combination when challenged by an opponent; alternatively, a player can win by collecting all of the game's Alfred Hitchcock cards along with the special It's a Mystery to Me card.