A Birmingham musician, his wife and a game called Murder.

Clue began in Britain as Cluedo. In November 2025 the BBC reported that Anthony Pratt, a professional musician, came up with the idea in Birmingham during the wartime blackouts, and that his wife, Elva Pratt, designed the board. The BBC traced the inspiration to the murder-mystery games Pratt saw played during his evenings at the piano in country hotels. The Guardian, in a 2008 essay by Kate Summerscale, quoted Pratt recalling the house parties of his youth and their murder games, and said that Elva was the better artist, so she designed the board.

The route to a publisher ran through a neighbour. The Pratts’ daughter, Marcia Lewis, told the BBC that Geoffrey Bull, who lived nearby in Kings Heath and had created the game Buccaneer, partly inspired her father and gave him his contact at the games maker Waddingtons. English Wikipedia says Pratt applied for a patent for the game, then called Murder, in 1944; that it was granted in 1947; and that Waddingtons executive Norman Watson bought it. The new name joined “clue” with Ludo, the old race game whose name is Latin for “I play.”

Postwar shortages slowed the launch. The Guardian dated the first British sets to 1948 and the American ones to 1949; English Wikipedia gives 1949 for the British launch. In the United States the game was licensed to Parker Brothers and renamed Clue, because, English Wikipedia says, Ludo was not widely known there.

Pratt’s first draft was larger than the game that shipped. English Wikipedia lists ten characters, among them a Mr. Brown, a Mr. Gold, a Miss Grey and a Mrs. Silver, with eleven rooms and nine weapons; Nurse White and Colonel Yellow became Mrs. White and Colonel Mustard before release. English Wikipedia dates his sale of the overseas rights to 1953; the BBC reported that he kept receiving British royalties until they ran out in 1967.

A mansion, six colours and a looping logo.

Clue’s visual identity starts on the board. Writing in The Guardian in 2008, Kate Summerscale described the original British board as having a 1930s, art deco look: a bright pistachio surround, mustard-yellow tiles in the hallways, pale beige rooms and the looping Cluedo logo set on the bottle-green steps down to the cellar. English Wikipedia describes the house as an English country mansion, named Tudor Close, Tudor Hall, Arlington Grange or Boddy Manor in different editions, with rooms around the edge, secret passages linking opposite corners and the solution envelope kept in the centre.

The suspects double as a colour system. In the standard game, English Wikipedia says, Miss Scarlett plays a red piece, Colonel Mustard yellow, Mrs. White white, Reverend Green green, Mrs. Peacock blue and Professor Plum purple. The names shift between markets. The victim is Dr. Black in Britain and Mr. Boddy in North America; Reverend Green becomes Mr. Green; the spanner becomes a wrench and the dagger a knife; and American editions dropped the second “t” from Scarlett after 1963 before restoring it in 2016.

The box changed faster than the board. English Wikipedia says Parker Brothers and Waddingtons each produced their own editions until the early 1990s. From 1972 the American boxes showed the six suspects in candid poses inside a room of the mansion, while British Cluedo boxes showed plainer pictures of the contents until 2000, when they took up the same illustrated style. The American artist Drew Struzan painted the cover art first used for the 1996 American edition and later for the 50th-anniversary game, according to English Wikipedia.

The slogans did similar work. English Wikipedia says the game was sold in America as “The Great New Detective Game” at launch and “The Great Detective Game” through the 1950s, before Parker Brothers put its own name on it; “Classic Detective Game” joined the American box in 1986 and the British one in 2000.

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A board game brand is carried less by any single object than by a set of printed parts that travel together: a box lid, a board, a handful of tokens or dice, and a folded sheet of rules. The lid does most of the public work, because it sits on a shelf and has to name the game, show what kind of play is inside and carry the maker’s mark, often at a size that reads from across a shop.

Inside, the board turns the game’s logic into a layout of spaces, tracks and colour-coded zones, and the tokens, cards and score pads repeat that colour code in miniature. Rule sheets are the quiet part of the identity, with their own headings, diagrams and house style, and they are often revised when a game is reissued.

Game names also change hands more often than their players notice, so the company printed on a lid may not be the one that first published it. Each guide separates what dated, independent sources record about a game’s origins, owners and editions from what the companies say about themselves.

Hasbro has owned both names since the 1990s.

The two names came together under one owner in the early 1990s. On 1 February 1991 The New York Times reported that the Tonka Corporation, which had acquired Kenner Parker Toys in 1987, had agreed to be acquired by Hasbro, bringing Parker Brothers games to the company that already owned Milton Bradley. The Guardian reported in 2008 that Hasbro acquired Waddingtons in 1994. English Wikipedia says Hasbro kept separate editions for each market until 2002 and 2003, when it released one design across them, localised for spelling and names.

Hasbro has since redrawn the brand several times. In December 2008 The Guardian described the new edition, sold in Britain as Cluedo Reinvention, which moved the murder from an English mansion to a Hollywood residence and recast Colonel Mustard as Jack Mustard, a football player. In July 2016, Time reported, Hasbro replaced Mrs. White with Dr. Orchid, a scientist, played with a pink piece. In January 2023 Polygon reported a refreshed edition with new art and new miniatures, sold beside a Signature Collection in black and white trimmed with gold foil. The trade paper Toy World reported the same month that the 2023 board measured 20 by 20 inches and that the box was designed to look like the victim Boddy Black’s desk, covered with blackmail evidence.

The brand also lives off the board. The Guardian noted a film, Clue, in 1985 and a British television game show from 1990 to 1993. In November 2025 the BBC reported that Marcia Lewis had given one of the first versions of the game, with letters and other memorabilia, to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the Library of Birmingham, including a letter from Waddingtons about the change of name.

For a design guide, Clue shows how a game can carry two names, one mansion and a cast of six coloured suspects through decades of new box art. Compare Monopoly, another Parker Brothers game now owned by Hasbro, and Candy Land, which Milton Bradley introduced in 1949, the year Clue reached America. For this guide we use cellar green, scarlet, mustard and pistachio with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Clue’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.