Guess Who?

Israeli designers Ora and Theo Coster — the husband-and-wife team behind Theora Design, one of the most prolific toy-invention studios in the world — created Guess Who? and brought it to Milton Bradley, which first manufactured it in Great Britain in 1979 and released it in the US in 1982. The Costers' spark came from the verbal game of 21 questions, but the genius was in the physicality: early flat-board prototypes failed to interest toy companies, and it was the flip-up tiles — the satisfying click of knocking down a face — that finally sold it.

Through the 80s and especially the 90s, Guess Who? became a fixture of households and classroom shelves: the red and blue boards, 24 cartoon faces on each, a mystery card in the little slot, and the strategy question every kid worked out for themselves — ask about glasses or hats and you might wipe out a third of the board in one flip; ask a lazy question and you've wasted a turn. Milton Bradley was absorbed into Hasbro, which still publishes the game today; the faces have been redesigned over the years, but the 90s cast is the one this database remembers.

It endures because it needs no rulebook after the first game and no luck beyond the card you draw — a pure information duel simple enough for a six-year-old and satisfying enough that adults still play it competitively at holiday tables. Few games have wrung so much drama out of the question "Does your person wear glasses?"