Professor Marcus du Sautoy at Oxford University, has revealed the secret tactics that will help people to win family-favourite games, including the best character to pick in Cluedo and which properties to buy in Monopoly.

He has calculated that Mrs Peacock is the best character to choose in Cluedo as she starts in a position on the board closest to most rooms.

People need not worry about coming up with the most impressive words in Scrabble either. Instead, those who strategise by placing down a selection of high-scoring two-letter words are more likely to end up victorious. There are more than 100 two-letter words in the official Scrabble dictionary, ranging from common words like "OK", "ew", “at” and “me” to esoteric ones like “qi”, and “xu”. 

In Monopoly, players should prioritise purchasing orange properties because of their proximity to the “Jail” square, which is twice as likely to be occupied as any other square on the board. Building three houses is the fastest way to earn back on your investment. Towards the end of the game, players who get stuck in jail and haven’t got the orange properties should try to remain there as long as possible to avoid paying high rents to their owner. 

Our mathematicians, who no doubt tend to have great board game success, have been rather busy too. They competed again in the Grammar School Mathematician of the Year and achieved 3rd place in the KS4 competition. Students from over a third of all grammar schools in England entered, including 50 RGS mathematicians across the Key Stage 3, 4 and 5 categories. Congratulations to Tharul Wanni Arachige who achieved third place in the Key Stage 4 category and to all those who participated!

Our students also designed a series of posters for the Maths Poster Competition to entertain and challenge.  It was open to all students from Year 7 - 13. Bubbling under every poster there is a piece of interesting mathematics. So, if you understand the underlying maths, it’s bound to give you an edge. 

Answers on a postcard to the Maths Department. Or, there's Board Game Club, which is open to all on a Wednesday in the Library.