Clutty was hired by England’s MI9, not because of his record, but because of his interest in magicians and escapology – and even more specifically because he once challenged Houdini to escape from a box he and his father personally built. Also, he was a notorious pain in the ass and free spirit who said things like, “Let’s smuggle radio parts into a cribbage board!” (Which, y’know, they did.)
Waddington, meanwhile, was the U.K. licensor of Monopoly and, more importantly, knew how to print things on silk. In fact, he was already printing maps for the Royal Air Force, the silk sewn into the linings of their jackets in case they were downed behind enemy lines. Silk didn’t wear out like paper and made a hell of a lot less noise – both things one would want when breaking out of a POW camp.
The two men created a bunch of fake humanitarian aid organizations – using the addresses of buildings burned down in the Blitz – and got to work. They created an elaborate code system to get messages to POWs, to let them know altered games were on the way. Eventually, they cut out the middle man and just told soldiers what to look for during basic training.
Using designs dreamed up by Clutty, Waddington printed the Monopoly board on one side of the silk and maps for various European countries on the back. They even figured out how to sneak a working compass, saw, and freaking wire cutters into the thin cardboard beneath. Real money was stashed in with all the fake stuff. The prisoners would simply steam the map off the board and, boom, something a whole hell of a lot better than Free Parking.
Mark Stozier, Creative Commons
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