True or false: The civil rights movement got under way in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat to a white person on a Birmingham, Ala., bus. Who wrote the syndicated column "My Day"? a) Walter Lippmann. b) Eleanor Roosevelt, c) Dorothy Thompson. In Reds, Warren Beatty played which early American Communist? No, trivia buffs, these questions are not from the latest edition of That Game. They are from an even more challenging and very popular contest based on TIME and created with the help of a number of its staff members. Now nearly a year old, TIME The Game has sold more than 400,000 copies in stores.

The irresistible diversion is the brainchild of Games Designer Alan Charles. Last year Charles and then TIME Business Manager Arthur Sachs, who has since become circulation director for Canada, came up with a concept that would capitalize on the growing popularity of trivia quizzes, TV shows and games. But, says Charles, "Ours is an information game, not a trivia game."

TIME The Game is for two or more players and has a board, dice, cards and markers. It also features books of questions drawn from each of the magazine's seven decades, divided into three ascending levels of difficulty and point value--true-false, multiple choice and short answer--and six categories: people, places, events, sports, arts and world.

The herculean task of providing all "those questions fell to TIME Deputy "Copy Chief Shirley Zimmerman, later "joined by PEOPLE Magazine Reporter Martha Babcock. Recalls Zimmerman:

"I was asked to do 'a few' questions. A few turned out to be 8,000, with only three months to complete the assignment. I dragooned several TIME colleagues into helping out, including Copyreaders Emily Mitchell, Maria Paul, Megan Rutherford and Amelia Weiss, and Proofreaders Gloria Jacobs and Joan Warner. Each put together several hundred queries. We tried them out on one another, and we could hardly have a conversation without someone interrupting, 'Hey, that would make a great question!' " TIME Reporter-Researcher Linda Young and Elliot Ravetz were among those who, in TIME's venerable tradition, checked out all 8,000 questions. The result is an entertaining contest that Trivia-Game Strategist-Author Jeff Rovin calls "the most sophisticated of all the trivia games."

In case you are not up on your trivia or your TIME, the answers to the questions above are: False (it was Montgomery, not Birmingham); b. Eleanor Roosevelt; John Reed.