Victoria Allen: It’s all down to numbers for being the family game champion

Many of us sitting down to play board games with our families over the holiday period are desperate for any kind of competitive edge.

But some crucial advantages, such as the best character to pick in Cluedo or what properties to buy in Monopoly, have now been revealed — thanks to maths.

According to Professor Marcus du Sautoy, a mathematician from Oxford University, Mrs Peacock is the best character to choose in Cluedo as she starts in a position on the board closest to most rooms. In Monopoly, you could cash in by owning orange properties because of their proximity to the “Jail” square.

Jail is twice as likely to be occupied as any other square on the board — visited by anyone landing on the “Go to Jail” space, drawing a card sending them there or punished for throwing three doubles.

Players leaving jail are more likely to throw scores of six, seven or eight because there are several combinations of these numbers possible with two dice.

This means people have a high chance of ending up on an orange property, and anyone who owns them should statistically cash in more often.

For those enjoying the more solitary pursuit of Wordle, maths could help solve a puzzle faster. Professor du Sautoy, in his book Around the World in 80 Games, passes on advice from Professor Barry Smyth, a computer scientist at University College Dublin.

Guessing the word “cones” followed by “trial” to gather information about the letters in a word, can lead to success in just over 96 per cent of games.

The book also offers advice for all those playing Risk, a board game “about diplomacy, conflict and conquest” who think controlling Europe is best, as it has only seven countries to take but provides five bonus armies per turn.

But players are reminded Europe also has four countries vulnerable to attack and eight invasion routes. So in fact the best continent to control is North America, which generates a good proportion of bonus armies but is still relatively easy to defend, with only three vulnerable countries and three invasion routes.

The sad news for Scrabble aficionados is that using maths, rather than impressive words, could help to win. Those who know a good selection of high-scoring two-letter words are very likely to end up victorious.

For Battleship, meanwhile, the advice is to hide your battleships in one area, rather than spreading them out, which is more likely to bamboozle opponents.

Professor du Sautoy said: “Bubbling under every game there is a piece of interesting mathematics. So if you understand the underlying maths, it’s going to give you an edge.

“That’s why my family have stopped playing games with me,” he said.