Board Game Patents – Tsuro

The Patent Tsuro, the tile-laying board game was not released until 2004, but the underlying game has been around much longer than that. The original game was called “Squiggle” and was the subject of United States Patent Number 4,180,271 (the ‘271 Patent), filed July 10, 1978. As disclosed in the ‘271 Patent by inventor Thomas McMurchie, other than using a “Next” tile instead of the familiar “Dragon” tile, the concept and rules for Squiggle are not much different than present day Tsuro. The Alternative Version It is interesting to note that in the ‘271 Patent McMurchie envisioned an alternative embodiment of the game, where instead of having two endpoints on each side of the tiles, the eight connection points on the tiles were on the four corners and four sides of the tiles. From Squiggle to Tsuro Although Squiggle was patented in 1979, it was not until 2001, when McMurchie played a game of Squiggle with WizKids founder…

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