Board game popularity over time: 22 years of Google searches
Which board games and puzzles has the world been searching for? We took more than two decades of Google Trends data for 19 classic games and turned it into a race. Press play and watch the Sudoku craze, the rise of the crossword, Wordle’s explosion and chess’s comeback.
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What the chart shows
Each bar is how much people searched Google for a game in that quarter, worldwide. The scale is relative: 100 is the busiest quarter of any game on the chart, which was Wordle in early 2022. Everything else is measured against that.
The big moments
2004: chess starts on top
At the start of the data, chess is the most-searched game on the list, ahead of crossword, solitaire and Scrabble.
2005–2009: the Sudoku craze
Sudoku goes from almost nothing to number one in about a year. In early 2006 it was searched more than four times as much as chess. The craze faded slowly, but Sudoku never went away: it’s still one of the most-searched puzzles today.
2009–2013: Mahjong and Scrabble trade places
Mahjong leads at the end of 2009. Many of those searches are for Mahjong solitaire, the tile-matching game, rather than the four-player game. Scrabble then has its best years on Google, peaking in early 2012, and the two swap the lead until 2013.
2013–2021: the crossword’s long climb
The crossword takes the lead at the end of 2013 and keeps growing steadily for eight years, as more people solve daily puzzles online. Solitaire climbs too, especially from 2017.
2020: lockdown and The Queen’s Gambit
Searches for Ludo nearly triple in spring 2020 as families looked for games to play together. In late 2020, Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit sent chess searches sharply up.
2022: Wordle breaks the chart
Wordle appears from nowhere and in a single quarter reaches more than six times the level of any other game on the list. It has calmed down since, but in 2026 it’s still number one.
2023–2026: the chess boom
Chess keeps setting new records: early 2023, early 2025 and again in 2026, when it reached its highest level in the whole dataset.
Play the games from the chart
Most of the games in the race, or close cousins of them, are free to play here.
Chess
The world’s great strategy game, with every rule. Play the computer at three levels or a friend.
Solitaire
Classic Klondike. Build each suit from Ace to King, with draw 1 or draw 3 and unlimited undo.
Sudoku
Fill every row, column and box with 1 to 9. Easy to hard puzzles, notes, hints and a daily puzzle.
Five-Letter Guess
Guess the hidden five-letter word in six tries. Coloured tiles show which letters are right. A new word every day.
Tile Match
Mahjong solitaire. Clear a stack of 72 picture tiles by matching pairs that have an open side.
Letter Tiles
A crossword tile game. Build words from your rack, hit the bonus squares and outscore the computer or a friend.
Checkers
Jump your opponent’s pieces, crown kings and clear the board. Captures are compulsory.
Mines
Uncover every safe square using the number clues, and flag the hidden mines. Your first tap is always safe.
Four in a Row
Drop your discs and line up four before your opponent: across, down or diagonally. Plus a daily puzzle.
Ludo
Race your four counters round the board and home. Capture rivals and hide on the safe stars.
Backgammon
The ancient race game. Hit blots, build points and bear off all 15 checkers before the computer or a friend.
Five Dice
Roll five dice up to three times a turn to score straights, full houses and five of a kind. Play solo, the computer or a friend.
How we made it
- Source: Google Trends, web searches worldwide, from January 2004 (when the data starts) to September 2026.
- Games: 19 search terms: chess, solitaire, sudoku, wordle, crossword, mahjong, scrabble, monopoly, checkers, ludo, minesweeper, dominoes, backgammon, battleship, connect 4, catan, mancala, yahtzee and jenga.
- Combining the numbers: Google Trends compares at most five terms at a time and scores each comparison from 0 to 100. We included a shared term in every comparison (chess, or checkers for the smaller games) and used it to put all 19 games on one scale.
- Smoothing: each bar is the average of three months, and the chart moves smoothly between quarters.
- Limits: searches aren’t the same as players, and some words mean more than one thing. “Monopoly” is also an economics term, “Battleship” is a film, and “Dominoes” overlaps with a pizza chain. Small games such as Mancala and Jenga have low search volumes, so their numbers are rough.
Questions
What is the most popular board game in the world?
By Google searches, chess is the most-searched classic board game, and has been for most of the last two decades; Scrabble overtook it for a few years around 2008 to 2013. Puzzles like Wordle and the crossword are searched more, but they’re played alone rather than against an opponent.
When was Sudoku most popular?
Searches peaked in early 2006, about a year after the craze began. At its height, Sudoku was searched more than any other game on this chart until Wordle arrived in 2022.
Is chess more popular now than before?
Yes. Chess searches have risen sharply since 2020, with records in early 2023, early 2025 and 2026.
Where does the data come from?
Google Trends, which shows how often a term was searched relative to all searches. The numbers are relative, not counts of searches or players.