Chris Haney, Co-Creator of Trivial Pursuit, R.I.P.

Trivial Pursuit is greatest board game ever invented! Me, my brother and friends played it all the time in the 80s. We even played with our parents. I probably have around 30 editions of the game. Thank you Mr. Haney for all of the fun times.

From AOL News --

Chris Haney, a former journalist who became the co-creator of the Trivial Pursuit board game, died Monday in Toronto at age 59.

Haney worked for The Canadian Press and the Montreal Gazette as a photo editor before creating the popular game with sports journalist Scott Abbott.

"He was at least as impactful on my life as anybody, including my parents, my wife and son," Abbott told The Canadian Press. "We did a lot together."

The pair met in 1975 after they arrived in Montreal to coordinate photo coverage for the 1976 Summer Olympics for The Canadian Press. Haney had worked for the news agency in various cities, and Abbott was a Canadian Press sports reporter.

They played a game of Scrabble one night and got to talking about ideas for their own game, The Canadian Press reported. At the end of the night, they had the idea for Trivial Pursuit.

They invented the game in 1979, when Haney was working for the Montreal newspaper, and it was released in 1982, taking off after a slow start. They sold the rights to the game to Hasbro in 2008 for $80 million.

Haney had a "blind faith" that their game would be successful, Abbott said, but they had no idea how big the game would become.

"We didn't realize it would transcend games players and become, with the Cabbage Patch Kids, what Time magazine in 1984 called an American social phenomenon," Abbott said.

Abbott said Haney, born in Welland, Ontario, was a voracious newspaper reader.

"He was not a scholar in the conventional sense," Abbott told The Canadian Press. "He had no use for the classroom. He always said, 'I quit school in grade 12. It was the biggest mistake I ever made. I should have done it in grade 10.'''

Abbott added, "That being said, he was one of the most knowledgeable, widely read people I've encountered. You could always discuss the affairs of the day