The World According to Ubi is a geography trivia game from the creators of Trivial Pursuit, and knowing a place name is only part of the challenge. You have to locate the answer on a map, sometimes with triangular precision.
Released in 1986, Ubi earned a reputation for being too hard, too complicated, too boring, and too long. My friends and I enjoyed it anyway, but its story starts with a much bigger trivia success.
The Scrabble friendship behind Trivial Pursuit
The story of Trivial Pursuit's origins begins in Montreal. Chris Haney, a high school dropout who became a photo editor at the Montreal Gazette, met sports journalist Scott Abbott in December 1975. They worked together during Montreal's 1976 Summer Olympics and became friends.
During a Scrabble session on December 15, 1979, they dreamed up a game about obscure knowledge. Within an hour, they had sketched a six-spoked board and chosen six subject categories.
An expensive start, then enormous sales
After interviewing game professionals at a toy fair, they brought in Haney's brother John and corporate lawyer Ed Werner. Their company, Horn Abbott, sold shares for $1,000 each to finance the project. Eighteen-year-old artist Michael Wurstlin accepted five shares for the original artwork because the company couldn't pay cash.
In November 1981, they trademarked Trivial Pursuit and produced 1,100 copies. Each cost $75 to manufacture, yet they sold them to retailers for $15.
Trade buyers weren't enthusiastic at first. Then word of mouth and a growing appetite for trivia changed everything: sales reached 1.3 million copies in 1983 and 20 million in 1984.
Ubi turned trivia into a map-reading challenge
Their next game idea followed a simple line of reasoning: people who knew about historical figures and events might also know where those things happened.
The result was The World According to Ubi. Ubi means "where" in Latin, and every geography question begins with that word. (It's clever, but the repetition and Yoda-like grammar gets annoying.)
The game arrived in a triangular box with a large map, custom dice, two hefty boxes of question cards, and a cloth bag of unusual plastic pieces. Instead of collecting Trivial Pursuit wedges, players assemble a pyramid to reflect their success in the game.
The BoardGameGeek entry for Ubi describes its central challenge: decipher a riddle-like question, then answer on the map.
The map, zones, and pyramid pieces
Ubi's map is the board, and it takes up plenty of table space. A numbered hexagonal grid covers the world, which the game divides into four zones.
|
Die marking |
Zone |
|
AMR |
Americas |
|
EUR |
Europe |
|
WAT |
Water |
|
UNI |
Universal, covering everywhere else |
Europe gets its own category, while much of the world falls under Universal. There's an obvious geographical bias there.
Each zone corresponds to a piece of your pyramid. To earn that piece, you need to answer a question in its zone with triangular precision. Collecting all four pieces qualifies you for the final challenge.
How a turn works
The player whose birthday falls closest to March 15 goes first. If there's a tie, the older player wins it.
On your turn, roll the zone die and the precision die. One determines the question's geographical category; the other determines how accurately you must locate the answer. An eye symbol lets you choose the zone or precision, depending on which die shows it.
Another player draws a card and reads the question. You then answer using the map's numbered grid.
Hexagonal versus triangular precision
The reticle is a hexagonal viewing window with an engraved hexagon divided into six triangular areas.
For a hexagonal answer, you identify the correct numbered hex. A triangular answer also requires the letter identifying the correct portion of that hex. Knowing the place name alone doesn't earn a pyramid piece. You need the correct hex number and triangle letter.
A Beach Boys question demonstrates the difference. It asks where their surf sound originated. The answer is Hawthorne, California, in hex numer 232.
With triangular precision, the complete answer is 232-R. Getting that right earns the corresponding pyramid piece.
Winning, setbacks, and questions without answers
Once you've earned all four pieces, you can roll the special elongated die, the Rubi Ubi, on your turn. It selects the zone for your final question, which you must answer with triangular precision.
A correct answer wins, and the die fits into the pyramid's top to complete it. If you're wrong, you can try again on a later turn, while someone else might finish first.
Then there are the complications. Occasional Caesar's Ghost cards can set players back for no apparent reason. (Our group usually ignored those.)
Red herrings work differently: these questions have no correct answer. Recognizing one as a red herring counts as answering correctly. The closing question about where the first alien landings on Earth will occur captures that sort of challenge.
Why Ubi ended up on clearance shelves
Back then, bookstores such as Borders, Waldenbooks, and B. Dalton were places to find games outside the mass market. My friends and I spent plenty of time and money there, and that's where we bought Ubi.
However, its first two years suggested a slow journey toward the “clearance” shelf. Even Selchow & Righter, the established company associated with Scrabble, couldn't make it catch on.
The complaints were straightforward: complicated rules, difficult questions, and games that ran too long. The obscure answers were a substantial challenge even after you understood how to play.
Eventually, copies turned up in thrift stores and garage sales for $10 or less, although exceptional or unopened copies could command more online.
Meanwhile, Trivial Pursuit continued through dozens of editions and revisions. Parker Brothers secured rights in 1988, and the game later became part of Hasbro. By 2023, it had reached 100 million copies.
Why I enjoyed it anyway
Our group had a great time with Ubi. One friend even had the map laminated, which solved the wrinkling problem visible on my copy.
It's an imperfect game, but winning such a demanding challenge feels gratifying. (Maybe I'm just a geography nerd.)
My favorite geography games, though, are the 10 Days series. There are editions for the USA, Africa, Europe, and Asia, among other variations. They offer another way to learn geography while having fun, without Ubi's particular demands.
A difficult game with a satisfying payoff
Ubi asked players to connect obscure facts with precise locations. That challenge helped explain both its limited appeal and the satisfaction our group found in it. Completing that pyramid was a gratifying win.