Best Monopoly Games Ever August 8, 2018August 7, 2018 Now anyone can customize a Monopoly set. And that’s nice. But how great is this story? (Thanks yet again, Mel!) Starting in 1941, an increasing number of British Airmen found themselves as the involuntary guests of the Third Reich, and the Crown was casting about for ways and means to facilitate their escape…Now obviously, one of the most helpful aids to that end is a useful and accurate map, one showing not only where stuff was, but also showing the locations of ‘safe houses’ where a POW on-the-lam could go for food and shelter. Paper maps had some real drawbacks — they make a lot of noise when you open and fold them, they wear out rapidly, and if they get wet, they turn into mush. Someone in MI-5 (similar to America’s OSS) got the idea of printing escape maps on silk. It’s durable, can be scrunched-up into tiny wads, and unfolded as many times as needed, and makes no noise whatsoever. At that time, there was only one manufacturer in Great Britain that had perfected the technology of printing on silk, and that was John Waddington, Ltd. When approached by the government, the firm was only too happy to do its bit for the war effort. By pure coincidence, Waddington was also the U.K Licensee for the popular American board game, Monopoly. As it happened, ‘games and pastimes’ was a category of item qualified for insertion into ‘CARE’ packages’, dispatched by the International Red Cross to prisoners of war. Under the strictest secrecy in a securely guarded and inaccessible old workshop on the grounds of Waddington’s, a group of sworn-to-secrecy employees began mass-producing escape maps, keyed to each region of Germany or Italy where Allied POW camps were located. When processed, these maps could be folded into such tiny dots that they would actually fit inside a Monopoly playing piece. As long as they were at it, the clever workmen at Waddington’s also managed to add: 1. A playing token containing a magnetic compass. 2. A two-part metal file that could easily be screwed together. 3. Useful amounts of genuine high-denomination German, Italian and French currency, hidden within the piles of Monopoly money. British and American crews were advised, before taking off on their first mission, how to identify a ‘rigged’ Monopoly set by means of a tiny red dot, one cleverly rigged to look like an ordinary printing glitch, located in the corner of the ‘Free Parking Square’. Of the estimated 35,000 Allied POW’S who successfully escaped, an estimated one-third were aided in their flight by the rigged Monopoly sets. Everyone who did so was sworn to secrecy indefinitely, since the British Government might want to use this highly successful ruse in still another future war. The story wasn’t declassified until 2007, when the surviving craftsmen from Waddington’s, as well as the firm itself, were finally honored in a public ceremony. It’s always nice when you can play that ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card! Ah, World War II. Remember when there were good guys and bad guys? And we were the good guys? And the fascists were the bad guys? And then, later, the KGB? And it was really, really bad to call journalists “enemies of the people,” let alone murder them? Or to praise those who do?* If you think it would be a good time to reinstate some checks and balances: Join Team Blue. CrushTheMidterms. It even designs an action plan for you. MobilizeAmerica. No need to choose: sign up with all three. Spread the word. And if you can — click here. *Or to mock disabled people or rip children from their mothers arms as they sought asylum? Or to start trade wars? Or even just to lie?