Since then, it has been relaunched and updated several times, and it is currently owned and published by the American game and toy company Hasbro.

Numerous games, books, a film, television series, and theatre adaptations have been released as part of the Cluedo franchise.

In 2008, Cluedo: Discover the Secrets was created (with changes to the board, gameplay, and characters) as a modern spin-off, but was criticised in the media and by fans of the original game.

Holed up in his home in Birmingham, England, during air raids on the city during World War II, Anthony E. Pratt, an English musician and factory worker, recalled the murder mystery games played by some of his clients at private music gigs as well as the detective fiction popular at the time, most notably Agatha Christie.

[3] Shortly thereafter, Pratt and his wife, Elva Pratt (1913–1990), who had helped design the game, presented it to Waddingtons' executive Norman Watson, who immediately purchased it and provided its trademark name of Cluedo (a play on "clue" and "Ludo", the Latin word for "I play" and the name of a popular board game based on Pachisi).

[6] Although the patent was granted in 1947, postwar shortages postponed the game's official United Kingdom launch until 1949.

The game allowed for play of up to eight[clarification needed] remaining characters, providing for nine suspects in total.

In addition, there were nine weapons, including the unused bomb, syringe, shillelagh (walking stick/cudgel), fireplace poker, and the later used axe and poison.

[9][10][11][12] The methodology used in the early versions of Cluedo is remarkably similar to a traditional, if little known, American card game the king of hearts has five sons.

[13] However, Pratt himself said his inspiration was a murder mystery parlour game he used to play with friends in which youngsters "would congregate in each other's homes for parties at weekends.

We'd play a stupid game called Murder, where guests crept up on each other in corridors and the victim would shriek and fall on the floor".

A deal was quickly struck to license "The Great New Sherlock Holmes Game" from the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle estate.

With the launch of the US 1972 edition, a television commercial showed Holmes and Watson engaged in a particularly competitive game.

Adjusting with the times, in 1979 US television commercials a detective, resembling a bumbling Inspector Clouseau from the popular Pink Panther film franchise, looks for clues.

In the 1980s, as in the US, Sherlock Holmes also appeared in TV advertising of the time, along with other classic detectives such as Sam Spade.

The murder victim in the game was known as Dr. Black in the UK edition and Mr. Boddy in North American versions.

[24] There are nine rooms in the mansion where the murder can take place,[26]: 121  laid out around the edge of the square game board.

In modern versions, all players roll the die/dice and the highest total starts the game, with play again proceeding clockwise.

Professor Plum can move to the study, and then take the secret passage to the Kitchen, the hardest room to reach.

However, only three distinct editions of Cluedo were released in the UK – the longest of which lasted 47 years from its introduction in 1949 until its first successor in 1996.

The eighth North American and fourth UK editions constitute the current shared game design.

In January 2023, Hasbro released a new edition of the game that included new miniatures and updated art and character backstories.

From 1972 on, the US editions presented lush box cover art depicting the six suspects in various candid poses within a room of the mansion.

The UK would finally adopt this style only in its third release in 2000, prior to which Cluedo boxes depicted basic representations of the contents.

Such lavish box art illustrations have become a hallmark of the game since copied for the numerous licensed variants which pay homage to Clue.

The revolver is now a pistol, the lead pipe and spanner/wrench have been removed, and a baseball bat, axe, dumbbell, trophy, and poison have been added.

Notably, it plays identically to standard classic rules but visually continues to use the new Discover the Secrets room layout, and two of the new weapons, as well as other design artwork.

It was retitled because the traditional British board game Ludo, on which the name is based, was less well known there than its American variant Parcheesi.

Minor changes include "Miss Scarlett" with her name spelled with one 't', the spanner being called a wrench, and the dagger being renamed a knife.

In some international versions of the game (mostly the Spanish-language ones), the colours of some pieces are different, so as to correspond with the changes to each suspect's unique foreign name variations.