Richard Tait, co-inventor of Cranium board game, dies at 58

His decidedly eclectic board game became a familiar part of American family life in the late 1990s and 2000s.

Richard Tait, entrepreneur, business executive, and venture capitalist who helped invent the board game Cranium, a familiar part of American family life in the late 1990s and 2000, died July 25 at his home on Bainbridge Island, Washington. He was 58.

His son Finn said the cause of death was complications from Covid-19.

In 1997, Richard Tait and his then-wife Karen Fries were vacationing with another couple on Long Island in the Hamptons when someone suggested they play a board game. But they couldn't find a game that everyone could enjoy. A couple dominated when they played Pictionary. The other won hands down when he switched to Scrabble.

Then Mr. Tait had an idea: what if there was a game that allowed each to play to their strengths? His friend Dan Katz, who won the Scrabble game that day, recalled Mr. Tait telling the room, "There has to be a way for everyone to feel comfortable." /p>

He quickly crafted a game that was part Pictionary, part Scrabble, part Trivial Pursuit, and part Hangman. After sharing the idea with a colleague named Whit Alexander, the two expanded the game, adding mini-competitions that involved charades-like role-playing, sculpting shapes from clay, and humming popular songs. /p>

"We knew just asking about the music wouldn't be enough," Alexander said in a phone interview. "We needed activities that allowed people to show off their musical intelligence."

The result was Cranium. Over the next decade, with the help of two new means of distribution - Amazon.com and the coffeehouse chain Starbucks - they sold over 44 million copies of the game and its sister titles in 22 countries before their company from being acquired by gaming and toy giant Hasbro.

"Cranium was - I'll say it - a game changer," said Chris Byrne, who was part of the team that launched Pictionary and is now a game and toy consultant known as The Toy Guy. "He revolutionized gaming - and the social aspects of gaming - for much of a generation."

Richard John Tait was born on January 17, 1964, in his home in Broughty Ferry, Scotland, a village on the north bank of the River Tay which flows into the North Sea. Her father, Thomas, was an executive at the Polaroid camera and technology company. His mother, Kathleen, worked part-time as a secretary and receptionist at doctors' offices in Broughty Ferry and later in Helensburgh, about 90 miles to the southwest, where the family moved in the 1970s.

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Mr. Tait studied computer science as an undergraduate at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh before moving to the United States, where he obtained a master's degree at the Tuck School of Business in Dartmouth. After finishing his M.B.A., he took a job at Microsoft in suburban Seattle just as the software maker was growing into one of the most powerful companies in the world. Soon after, he hired one of the company's most notable employees: future CEO and Chairman Satya Nadella.

In the 1990s, at the heyday of multimedia CD-ROMs, Mr. Tait oversaw Microsoft's catalog of reference titles, including the Encarta Encyclopedia and Bookshelf, a catch-all collection covering Roget's Thesaurus, The American Heritage Dictionary, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, and The Chicago Manual of Style. He eventually became something of an entrepreneur-in-residence at the company, launching five new Internet ventures within Microsoft in four years, including Carpoint, a car shopping service, and Sidewalk, an online city guide. /p>

He left the company in 1997, hoping to become a j...