Another Clue/Cluedo?

My long time readers know my long time love and fascination for Clue. Or Cluedo, as it is called here in the UK and elsewhere. I have one version here, a present from my wife, but it's a Game of Thrones variation. We played it a few times, it's fun. But I miss the old classic version of my youth. And I also want to try the other versions there are. Anyway, to my great surprised, I saw yet another Cluedo in the local toy shop. It costs £29.99, not exactly cheap, but I am happy to encourage local businesses. I am not certain if it is a new version or the old one with a new cover. Basically, they changed the age and ethnicity of some of the characters. Otherwise it could be, as it says on the box, the classic mystery game. I have to say, this one looks better than the one I saw back in 2019. It looks less cartoonish. So many Clues, which one to choose?

Clue: The Great Museum Caper?

As my long-time readers know, one of my favourite board games is Clue. Or Cluedo as it is called on this side of the pond. I have played the classic version more time than I can even count, it was my go-to game as a child. Now I have here one variant of it, the Game of Thrones one, but I want one day to get my hand on the classic version. The original one of course, but also some of the variants. I know among them of The Great Museum Caper, which I once saw in a shop years ago. That would be right up my alley: a game set in a museum? Involving burglaries, fine art and antiques? And it's in 2D as well. That is like a dream board game which I sadly never played yet. I hope they are still publishing it, or will release it again one day.

Clue Master Detective

You know how much I love board games and Clue (or Cluedo as it is also called) one of my favourite. Nowadays, there are many versions and variants of the original game: a Simpsons edition, a Harry Potter edition, a Game of Thrones edition (we have this one), not to mention the revamped versions of the original one and the children edition. I have never been into them much, I prefer the classic version. That said, I am curious about one or two variants of the original game. It is Clue Master Detective, which is basically an extended edition with more suspects, more room and more weaons, as the box says. I have seen it once in a shopdecades ago and I regret to this day not buying it. What I like about it is that it does not try to reinvent the wheel, or revamp the original, but simply gives more of the same. Which means more of what we already love.

New Cluedo, new character

Christmas is coming, board games are getting out, as 'Tis the season to be playing. For tonight's post, I decided to blog about one of my favourite board game. I might be late in the news, but here is what I found recently: yet another release of Cluedo (or Clue as I have known it growing up). The setting and characters are the same, except for one detail: Mrs White the maid was replaced by Dr Orchid, an Asian woman dressed in black and pink. I have two questions about this new Dr Orchid: Why? And was it necessary? Yes, Clue is old fashioned, has stock characters based on English whodunit stereotypes, it's neither inventive nor original. But it is part of its charm. I can bypass the way the old ones are pictured, much younger than they should be, with a sexied up Reverend Green and a rejuvenated Mrs Peacock. I don't think this new femme fatale (and apparently all female characters on the board are now young and sexy). So this Christmas, if we can, we will play the old Cluedo game, with the the true classic characters. All of them.

About secret passages

This is the classic board of Clue (or Cluedo as it was originally known in the UK) which is one of my favourite board games. there are two sets of secret passages: one between the kitchen and the studio and one between the conservatory and the lounge. As I blogged before, I always loved the mansion in the game. For many reasons, but one of them being the presence of these secret passages. Secret passages might be cheap tropes in whodunits an detective fiction, so gratuitous in fact that they were heavily criticized early on, but they were also a common element in my make belief games as a child. My brothers and I used them as plot points, sometimes as atmospheric settings themselves (and not merely part of the setting) or even as MacGuffin. We even had a few "real ones" to use sometimes (read my post here). And it never completely left me: I still love the idea of secret passages in fiction, if used properly.

Miss Scarlet rolls first!

Once upon a time, my brothers and I used to play Clue/Cluedo every weekend afternoons, sometimes evenings too. It was, it is still, one of my favourite board games, the one crime fiction story that never disappointed, because the resolution was always different every time you played it. Playing between ourselves, we learned the rules in details. Playing with others, we discovered that nobody else had bothered reading the rules and were just playing using common rules from other board games. There is one in particular that is often disregarded: unlike other board games, where the one that makes the highest roll on the dice plays first, in Clue it is Miss Scarlett (or Scarlet, as the American version of the game spells her name) who makes the first move. Then Colonel Mustard, then whoever. Don't ask me why it is Miss Scarlett. Because lady's first, because she is also a femme fatale and the other women on the board rather plain looking, in any case this is something that must be respected.

Clue/Cluedo for November

I don't know why, but today I thought of the board game Clue, or Cluedo as it is called here in the UK. When I was a child, my brothers and I spent so many weekends playing the game. As it was PJ who received the game on his birthday in October, the novelty had not worn off in November, when I remember playing the game the most, and sometimes expanding it into live action, improvised crime stories, often set in an English mansion (for me the Cluedo mansion was THE mansion), with plenty of secret passages. It helped me get through the dreary days of November... And get over the Sunday blues! And today I thought that it could be a nice activity to spend time on a November Sunday.

Classic Cluedo!

Sometimes you have small yet very pleasant surprises, that make your day jnot because you gain anything from it personally, but because it gives you hope in human civilization. Like when I saw this. It was a most welcome sight during my last visit to a nearby Waterstones. Usually I would not be too happy to see a board game in a bookshop (because I expect to find books and book related material in a bookshop) but seeing this Clue/Cluedo game really made me happy. it is called a retro series, but it truly is and should be called Classic Cluedo (or Clue, if like me you discovered it under its North American name). As opposed to the revamped, modernised and rather pathetic attempt version of recent years. This is back to its source, the game as we know it and as we love it. And it is the 1986 edition, the very edition I discovered as a child. It became my favourite boardgame and it always have a special place in my heart. Cluedo contributed to develope my love for crime fiction (for a long time in whodunit form) and fueled my imagination as a child. I am so very glad it is back in its classic form and look.

Souvenir d'un dimanche après-midi

Ceci est un billet dominical, car bien entendu alors que j'écris ces lignes, nous sommes le dimanche après-midi. J'écris ça en premier lieu parce que, ben, c'est plate un dimanche après-midi. Bon, je ne m'ennuie pas en ce moment, je me tiens occupé de diverses façons (lecture, regarder des DVDs en boucle, etc.), mais pour une raison quelconque j'ai pensé aux dimanches après-midi de mon enfance. Ceux monotones sans fête familiale, sans évènement spécial à célébrer. Ce qui voulait dire: un dimanche après-midi à jouer à Clue/Cluedo ou à un autre jeu de société, mais c'était la plupart du temps Cluedo. Plusieurs parties en boucles. J'y jouais le colonel Mustard, j'ai expliqué pourquoi ici. Et je me demande si ce n'étaient pas les meilleurs dimanches après-midis que j'aie passés. Avant de jouer à D&Dr, bien entendu. Une question comme ça: quelqu'un a-t-il joué à Clue en suivant les règles avec rigueur? Parce que j'ai souvent remarqué qu'elles ne le sont pas. On ne les suivait pas exactement à l'époque, mais je crois que mes frères et moi on les connaissait mieux que les autres.

The Detective Tales cover for September

Today is a good occasion as any to observe this blogging tradition (a tradition of this blog, I mean) of uploading a cover from Detective Tales and comment on it. September is a tricky month, because my mind is all on horror stories and I think very little about crime fiction, so I am less inspired watching these covers. Last year I had chosen a cover with some elements you could find in horror stories, even though there was no supernatural element in it. I did something similar in 2008, uploading a cover with strong sadistic elements. So this year I looked thoroughly, pondered a lot about what would look good on Vraie Fiction, then chose the cover from September 1938. It is a crime fiction adventure cover, but it does have the nod to other genres: the simian hunchback and the secret passage, right by a fireplace.

So let's have a good look at the cover. When I saw it, it reminded me of the Clue/Cluedo mansion, which I wrote a post about this year. In a way, the setting belongs more to a whodunit than hardboiled crime fiction. I say whodunit, I should add a lazy one, because as Ronald Fox said in his ten Commandments of Detective Fiction, shouldn't rely on secret passages, not more than one anyway. It is true that it may be the only one. The old mansion, or the luxurious house is a setting of whodunits, in any case. I don't know what Fox thought of hunchbacks. That said, this is not a whodunit story, for obvious reasons: the hero is not an eccentric detective, but an action man, athletic and probably a private eye, even though he is very well dressed and firing away at an adversary out of the frame. The living room is not a place where the detective will reveal the identity of the murderer in front of all the suspects: it is a place of violent confrontation and danger, the fire still burning very near the escape route, blocked by a nasty antagonist. The two ladies in the back are both damsels in distress, one because she is unconscious, the other because she does not see the beastly henchman holding a knife. He could easily belong to a Gothic horror story. But in any case, it is an exciting piece of work.

Colonel Mustard (and why)

This post is a rewrite of a post I wrote in French a year ago. Yes, I am recycling old posts. Shamelessly. I was thinking about it after I blogged about board games yesterday. I was wondering if there others here that are (or were) into Clue/Cluedo. Back when I was a child, it was maybe my favorite board game. I always played Colonel Mustard. On the left, you can see a portrait (well, his suspect card) from the 1986 edition, the one we had (and have still, actually). The character, like all the others, changed a lot since the game was first released, but this is how I imagined him.

I played him for many reasons, some strategic, some sentimental. First, it has something to do with his pawn color and the name. I preferred the yellow color as a child and I always used yellow pawns when I could. I also loved and still love mustard. It was enough for me to choose Mustard, it was silly like that. And there was also his rank, he was an army officer. He had a certain status that the other characters did not have. More strategically, he was rolling second after Miss Scarlet, the first male character to roll. So this is why I played Colonel Mustard. For those who played, which character in Cluedo did you prefer to have?

The Clue/Cluedo Mansion

I have blogged before about Clue/Cluedo, in fact I did a post in French about it last year. So Cluedo, or Clue as we call it in America, was my favourite board game as a child. I always played Colonel Mustard, for various trivial reasons: I loved the dark yellow colour of the pawn, yellow was in fact one of my favourite colour as a child, I thought a military officer was a cool alter ego, and I always loved mustard. He was also the male character that moved earlier in the game, he was second after Miss Scarlet.

But I am not blogging about the characters today. After I blogged about English countryside and crime last week, I just thought about the Cluedo Mansion. THE Mansion. As a child, I thought it was the coolest place ever and the best hideout for a badguy, the best setting for a crime, the best place to spend a weekend too. All rolled into one. I have stopped reading whodunits years ago, but I remember what got me into them when I was younger. It was not the stereotypical characters but the setting, those remote English houses. And I received this image of them from Clue. The mansion or manor (what is the difference?) has many rooms set for leasure: the library, the ball room, the billiard room. It has a piano, so if one of the guests can play you have music, or in my case someone to accompany me while I sing. And it has secret passages! More than one, which is against Ronald Knox's Ten commandments of Detective Fiction. But this is game and wish fulfilment, not "proper" crime fiction, so the place is allowed such abundance of secret passages. It is really a dream house, especially if you have a dark side...

Le Colonel Mustard (et pourquoi)

Ce billet est une inspiré d'un billet précédent. J'ai posé tout récemment une question existentielle (la 139e), où je demandais quel personnage de Clue/Cluedo vous préfériez jouer et pourquoi. J'apporte ma propre réponse ici: le colonel Mustard. Je le choisissais pour plusieurs raisons, certaine sstratégiques, certaines sentimentales. Je sais que les personnages de Clue ont changé radicalement au fil des ans et des différentes versions, Mustard est passé d'une caricature ridicule de colonel anglais de la très vieille école à un militaire à l'allure digne et efficace, bien sûr je place de mon expérience particulière avec le jeu et la version que nous avions (achetée vers la fin des années 80). Je lisais beaucoup d'Agatha Christie à l'époque (ça m'a passé) ainsi que quelques Sherlock Holmes (je regardais beaucoup la série avec Jeremy Brett), alors Clue me permettait de jouer un whodunit sur une base régulière.

 Tout d'abord, parce que j'aimais la couleur du personnage, le jaune moutarde. D'ailleurs j'aimais et j'aime toujours la moutarde, alors il y avait déjà une certaine affinité entre lui et moi. À cause du rang aussi, à l'instar de Prof Solitaire. Un colonel dans l'armée, ça avait un certain statut qu'un Mr Green ou Professeur Plum n'avaient pas. Dans la version que nous avions, le colonel Mustard était celui qui avait l'air le plus présentable (voir l'image): athlétique, un flegmatique tout britannique, etc. Green était vieillissant et obèse et Plum avait l'air d'un universitaire coincé. Mustard pouvait être tant un meurtrier d'envergure (s'il s'avérait coupable) ou un détective compétent (sur l'image de la boîte il tenait une loupe à la main, et puis il était peut-être de la police militaire, voire un espion). Il y avait aussi des raisons stratégiques, enfin une: Mustard est le second pion à se déplacer après Miss Scarlet. On oublie souvent ça quand on joue à Clue: Scarlet est la première à jouer, l'ordre n'est pas déterminé par un tir de dés. Mais c'était surtout pour les raisons sentimentales que je jouais Mustard. La stratégie, sur laquelle vous pouvez lire sur Wikipedia,est venue plus tard.

(Note sur la photo: elle a été prise par mon père, à ma demande et envoyée via Dropbox.)

Question existentielle (139)

Je n'aime pas trop poser une question existentielle trop tôt après la précédente (je veux faire des billets substantiels de temps en temps), mais celle-ci m'est venue en tête récemment et je la pose ici avant de l'oublier:

-Dans le jeu de société Clue/Cluedo, quel est votre personnage préféré et pourquoi?