Trivial Pursuit co-creator Chris Haney dead at 59

Chris Haney, the Canadian co-creator of the hit board game Trivial Pursuit, died Monday in a Toronto hospital, according to reports.

Former colleagues of Haney, who was a photo editor at the Montreal Gazette when he invented the quiz game with fellow journalist Scott Abbott, learned of his death Monday.

Haney is survived by his wife and three children. He was 59.

Haney and Abbott came up with the concept for the immensely popular game in December 1979 when they were toiling over a game of Scrabble. Wanting to create something as wide-reaching as the classic word game, Haney and Abbott had a rough framework of Trivial Pursuit — including categories and the circular board — scrawled out on paper placemats within an hour.

Since then, millions of copies have been sold around the world.

Themed versions of the immensely popular quiz game have also surfaced over the years, much to the delight of fans of everything from Star Wars to Saturday Night Live.

Each edition of the game has thousands of questions in a variety of categories and has entertained families, friends and patrons at trivia nights for years.

The game reached an incredible height of success in the mid-1980s, when more than 20 million copies of the game were sold in North America.

The game was recently the centre of a legal battle after a Cape Breton, N.S., man insisted the game's concept was his idea. After hearing from more than 50 witnesses, not one of whom supported the man's claim, the case was dismissed in 2007.