How to Play Break the Bank

If you occasionally find yourself reminiscing about the hit 1970's game show "Break the Bank" and wish you could have appeared on the show, you can make your own Break the Bank game board and play at home. While this home-game version does not include a celebrity line-up, and may require you to plunder your Trivial Pursuit question cards, you can have hours of endless fun with this old, but not forgotten favorite.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Scissors
• Poster board
• Markers
• Trivia questions

1. Create your Break the Bank game board. Cut twenty 2 by 2 inch pieces from a piece of poster board. On three boxes write '"$100," on another three write "$200," and on another three write "$300."
2. Draw money bags on five of your 2 by 2 inch squares. These boxes will not have a specific dollar value, just a bag full of money. Finally, write the word '"Wild" on one box. If contestants pull the "Wild" box, they can place the value of their choice on the box. You should now have nine money boxes, five money bags, one wild box and five blanks.
3. Gather your trivia questions. You can make up your own questions, take them from a trivia book or steal them from your Trivial Pursuit game. Try making the game educational for your kids by writing questions that help them study for tests, memorize state capitals or learn vocabulary.
4. Set up your game board by shuffling the 20 boxes and placing them face down on the table. It is important that none of the contestants know which boxes are where.
5. Begin to play Break the Bank by flipping a coin to decide which contestant will go first. The first player will choose a box and try to win its value by listening to one true answer and one false answer to a trivia question. If the contestant can guess which answer is correct, they earn the value of the box. If the contestant guesses incorrectly, the value of the box is given to the next player, so be careful with the value you place on a wild box.
6. Pick up a money bag and simply accept the box with the hopes of collecting three, forfeiting your turn to play. Get three boxes of the same kind, blank or not, and you win. Get three money bags and you get $5,000 dollars, the number set to break the bank. Or, collect enough money boxes to gather $5,000 and you break the bank.