French board game drives America crazy

Edmond Dujardin’s game Mille Bornes involves trying to be the first to complete 1,000 bornes (kilometres) without being stopped en route by an accident or attack.

Around 350,000 games are sold every year in France – and around 100,000 in the US, making it a key foreign market.

Dujardin Games marketing director Anne Zeizig said: ‘’Americans tend to like driving so they relate to it and it is easy to play.”

The game was called 1000 Bornes, in reference to the national road 7 (996km between Paris and the Riviera) but it was renamed Mille Bornes when it launched in America to avoid losing its “French-ness”.