The concept was developed that afternoon, but it took them two years and two additional partners before the game was launched, at a loss to the inventors, in the fall of 1981.

They've since made up for it, many times over. All four are now millionaires and the initial 34 people who scraped together as little as $1,000 for five shares -or accepted shares instead of payment for services - have also realized fortunes as Trivial Pursuit has become the world's No. 1 board game.

Haney, photo editor at The Gazette in Montreal with an offbeat sense of humour, and Abbott, a sportswriter with The Canadian Press with a superb memory for detail, had been friends for four and arranged with an unemployed 18-year-old artist, Michael Wurstlin, to develop the final art work in exchange for five shares. By November 1981, when the first 1,100 sets were ready, they had cost Horn Abbot almost $ 75 each to manufacture, an outlandish price for a board game. They sold each game initially for $15 so that retailers could price the game at $29.95 - still considered exorbitant for a board game.

They sold out. But their enthusiasm crashed at the Montreal and New York toy fairs of early 1982 when fewer than 400 orders were taken and two major game companies turned them down. "At that point we could have been had for a song," Haney acknowledges. He had exhausted his savings, had sold everything but his cameras, and had driven himself to anxiety attacks that forced a recuperation at his father-in-law's farm. Still they soldiered on and, encouraged by the fact that Canadian stores that had sold the initial supply of games wanted more, they wrote a second edition, Silver Screen. After they secured a $75,000 line of credit against personal liability, they put another 20,000 games into stores. Production costs were still high, but they broke even. Then the head of Chieftain Products (a Canadian company and distributor for Selchow and Righter - a major games company in the United States) became interested. He sent a game to the United States company where three top executives played it, loved it, and thought it might be their answer to the video game challenge.

The U.S. company agreed to manufacture and sell Trivial Pursuit in the United States and hired a PR consultant who launched an unusual direct mail promotion to 1,800 of the top buyers attending the 1983 New York Toy Fair and to Hollywood stars. Both promotions were successful, and the game took off beyond anyone's wildest imagination.

By the end of 1983, even before the Christmas rush, 2.3 million games had been sold in Canada, and a million more in the United States. Selchow and Righter could not keep up with the demand as retail sales soared that year. In 1984, a record 20 million of the games were sold in the United States alone, contracts were signed for European and Australian distribution rights, and retail sales exceeded one billion dollars. The kitchen table capitalists were newsmakers all over North America. Becoming award winners, caused them to replace their customary T-shirts and jeans for tuxedos to attend a dinner in Toronto to receive an Ontario Business Achievement Award.

Today, multiple versions of Trivial Pursuit are sold. The questions have been adapted to challenge players of different ethnic backgrounds in 19 languages and 33 countries. Horn Abbot continues to turn out new additions of Trivial Pursuit under the direction of President Jim Ware, a tax lawyer lured from a leading law firm in Toronto in 1984. In December 1993, Games magazine named Trivial Pursuit to the Games Hall of Fame.

The partners are still friends, pursuing widespread interests including ownership of two golf courses outside Toronto, race horses, a junior hockey team, and numerous other pursuits besides the one that made it all possible.