Every State’s Signature Board Game, According to Google (2026 Map)

Every state has a board game it searches for more than the rest of the country. In Wisconsin it’s cribbage, searched at about four times the national rate. In Mississippi it’s Phase 10, at 3.1 times. Utah leans toward Ticket to Ride, Ohio toward Yahtzee, and Washington, D.C., toward a game about birds.

We pulled a year of Google Trends data for 29 board and card games across all 50 states and D.C., then found each state’s signature game: the one it searches for most above the national average. The map below shows the result, and the full state-by-state table is further down.

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The Short Version

• Cribbage is the signature game of 17 states, a band running from Washington across the northern Plains and the Great Lakes to New England. Wisconsin (4.2×), Minnesota (4.1×), Montana (4.0×) and Maine (3.9×) lead.
• Phase 10 owns the South. It’s the signature game of 9 states, led by Mississippi (3.1×), Arkansas (2.2×) and West Virginia (1.8×).
• The surprises: Ticket to Ride in Utah, Wingspan in D.C., Yahtzee in Ohio, Clue in Indiana, Risk in Kansas, Sequence in California, and Mexican Train in Arizona and New Mexico.
• Scrabble and Monopoly get the most searches overall. Scrabble tops total searches in 40 states and Monopoly in 10, but that’s mostly because they’re the biggest names, which is why the signature map tells a more interesting story.

The Cribbage Belt

Cribbage is the clearest regional pattern in the data. It’s the signature game everywhere from Alaska and Washington across Montana, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Michigan to all of northern New England.

Cribbage is a card game, usually for two, played with a regular deck and a pegboard for keeping score. The rules are on our list of 25 card games for a standard deck, which explains how to play cribbage and 24 others.

Check cribbage board prices on Amazon →

Phase 10 Country

Phase 10 is the South’s game. It’s the signature game in Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Missouri.

Phase 10 is a rummy-style card game from Mattel where everyone races through ten set combinations. It scores 5/5 Bamboo and 4/5 Pandas in our Phase 10 review, and Phase 10 vs Uno explains why it’s the better game of the two.

Check Phase 10 price on Amazon →

The State-by-State Surprises

Utah: Ticket to Ride (1.7×). Utah is the only state where a modern hobby game is the clear signature pick. D.C. also leans toward one, Wingspan, and Colorado is a toss-up between Wingspan and Ticket to Ride. Ticket to Ride is #1 on our family board games list.

Washington, D.C.: Wingspan (1.6×). The capital leans toward Wingspan, the bird-collecting engine-building game. Our Wingspan review explains the appeal.

Ohio: Yahtzee (1.4×). The classic dice game is Ohio’s signature, ahead of Monopoly.

Arizona and New Mexico: Mexican Train (1.4× and 1.6×). Mexican Train, the dominoes game, is the signature of both Southwestern states.

Kansas: Risk (1.3×). Kansas is the only state where the world-conquest classic is the signature game. If you love Risk, our games like Risk list has shorter alternatives.

Indiana: Clue (1.2×). Indiana is the only state where the murder-mystery classic comes out on top.

California: Sequence (1.3×). California’s pick is the team card-and-board game, covered in our Sequence review.

Florida and New York: Rummikub (1.5× and 1.2×). The tile game is the signature of both states.

Nevada: Monopoly (1.2×). Fittingly, the state built on Las Vegas leans toward the game about buying property and taking everyone’s money.

Texas, Georgia and Illinois: Uno. The card game is the signature in all three. Nebraska also comes out as Uno at 3.4×, but that result comes with a caveat explained below.

The Most-Searched Game in Each State

If you simply count total searches, the map is far less varied. Scrabble leads in 40 states, Monopoly in 10 and Uno in 1.

That’s a measure of how famous a game is more than how much a state loves it, and Scrabble’s lead almost certainly includes people looking up words rather than people looking to play. That’s why the signature map, which compares each state with the national average, is the one we lead with.

Every State, in One Table

The “times the national rate” figure shows how much more a state searches for its signature game than the country as a whole. Eight states are toss-ups, where the top two games were too close to call in our second check.

How We Did It

We used Google Trends search interest for the past 12 months, October 2025 to October 2026, for 29 board and card games. We used Google’s topic for each game rather than the plain word, so Clue wasn’t mixed up with crossword clues or Risk with the everyday word. Google Trends compares at most five terms at a time, so each comparison included four games plus a shared anchor game, which let us put all 29 on one scale.

Google Trends scores searches relative to each place’s total search volume, as Google explains in its Trends help pages. For each state we worked out each game’s share of all 29 games’ searches, then compared it with that game’s national share. The game with the biggest lead over its national share is the state’s signature game. To make sure the results weren’t a fluke of the method, we ran the whole comparison twice with two different anchor games, Yahtzee and Catan. The two runs agreed in 43 of 51 places, and we list the other eight as toss-ups.

A few caveats:

• This measures searches, not sales or play. A state that searches more for a game might be buying it, learning the rules or playing it online.
• Nebraska’s Uno result may be inflated by searches for UNO, the University of Nebraska Omaha, even though we used Google’s game topic.
• Scrabble’s national total likely includes word look-ups, which is why we lead with the signature map.
• Smaller states have less search data, so their results are noisier than large states’.
• We left out Azul because Google’s topic for it was too new and small to compare fairly.

More From King Panda Games

If your state’s game is one you haven’t tried, our best board games list and our best card games list are good places to start. Shopping for a family? See our best board games for families.