Rainy day fun in the gauzy summers of my youth often meant endless games of Clue. Nobody wanted to play as Mrs. White—Mrs. Peacock, Miss Scarlet, Professor Plum, Mr. Green and Colonel Mustard are the more colorful characters. So if a glut of older kids joined us at the board, I got stuck in the part of the maid: Mrs. White, according to our edition of the Hasbro classic, was a rosy-cheeked, hennish biddy in a black dress and white apron, dusting a sideboard.

If Clue wasn’t a staple of your childhood, first of all, well, sorry: It’s a simple but riveting race around the game board to find out who killed Mr. Boddy, a guest discovered dead at Mr. Black’s mansion—in which room: billiard room, ballroom, conservatory? And with what weapon: rope, revolver, lead pipe? The women among the possible suspects include the dangerously alluring Miss Scarlet, a Jessica Rabbit lookalike and possibly a high-class call girl; and the glamorous widow and society dame Mrs. Peacock, who may or may not have killed her late husband.