Sussex father's Tower of Trivia board game lands in Hamleys (From The Argus)

Sussex father's Tower of Trivia board game lands in Hamleys

4:50pm Monday 15th October 2012 in News By Anna Roberts, Crime reporter

Tim with his Trivia Tower

A father said he can ‘die happy’ now that the board game he invented is going to be sold in world-famous toy shop Hamleys.

Tim Short, married to Arun District Council worker Nicky and father to 13-month old Zack, woke up one Saturday morning with the idea for “fun family game” Trivia Tower.

Eight years on, 140 copies of the game will be sold in the London Regent Street shop from November.

Former Brighton resident Mr Short, who now lives in Homefield Close, Rustington, near Littlehampton, said: “It is like a dream come true. But I will really believe it when it is on the shelf in Hamleys.”

The game includes a Jenga-style tower where whether players will be able to build the tallest tower or not will depend on if trivia questions are ans-wered correctly. Each block is worth different points depending on how hard the question is.

The 40-year-old said that his ultimate aim was to have copies of the game, made by Gamesplay UK, in all UK retailers, including Argos and W H Smith.

Describing how he felt when he learnt that his idea had been taken up, he said: “I was jumping up and down and dancing around. I grabbed Nicky and Zack and hugged them. I was dancing around with Zack.

“The day I was due to find out if it had been picked up I was so nervous – I checked my phone every five minutes.”

He said he made up a lot of questions in the game. One is who was the first president to live in the White House? – the answer is John Adams.

The computer programmer, based at St Richard’s Hospital, Chichester, continued: “Most of the game was developed while I lived in Brighton.”