Mark Rober "solved every board game," then ambushed his old statistics teacher

Connect Four, Battleship, Jenga and Monopoly become probability lessons in a match against Mr. Malloy, the teacher who first showed him how to win Guess Who?

Channel: Mark Rober Story of October 25, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? 3,616,654 views so far, and here is what is inside it.

I Solved Every Board Game

Mark Rober learned to play Guess Who? properly in high school, from his statistics teacher. Mr. Malloy showed him how to ask questions that cut the remaining faces in half each time. In "I Solved Every Board Game," the student invites the teacher to CrunchLabs for what is supposed to be a tour.

"I didn't invite you out here today for a tour. This is an ambush," Rober tells him. "A board game ambush."

Before the rematch, Rober does his homework. He sends researchers to watch people play at a school, a beach, a senior center and a biker bar, studies hundreds of games, then sits down in a park with a sign: beat me, win $100. Along the way he slips in two quick tricks. In Rock, Paper, Scissors, "See what won, then beat that one, regardless of who lost." He also shows a coin toss that never actually flips end over end.

Then the games. In Connect Four, stack the center column and build a "beak" shape that threatens two wins at once. In Battleship, fire on a checkerboard pattern, hit the neighbors after a strike, and aim for open water, though Malloy has answers of his own. In Tic-Tac-Toe, start in a corner, take a second corner, and the third sets up a double threat.

Jenga gets the engineer's treatment: static and kinetic friction, manufacturing tolerances, and the claim that loose blocks are "a feature" rather than a bug. It also brings the video's best moment of surprise, when Rober learns that zero counts as an even number. He even builds a wrist-mounted air cannon to blast out stuck blocks, and it does not save him.

Malloy brings the sharpest Monopoly advice: "Getting three houses is the best return on your investment." The video adds the orange set, jail as a trap early and a refuge late, and the case for trading. The description credits U.S. national Monopoly champion Richard J. Marinaccio for the research. One round is Squirrel Dash, a CrunchLabs toy, so that segment doubles as a showcase for Rober's own company. The final tiebreaker is decided by Hungry Hungry Hippos, where no statistics help at all.

In the comments, many viewers dwell on the line about the teacher becoming the student, and on a teacher being remembered this fondly years later.

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More from Mark RoberThis week on the channel +137M views this weekMark Rober puts a foam-pit book break to the fun testA Warner Bros. partnership sends him from reading to a roller coaster, with saliva samples along the way.Channel: Mark Rober · Story of October 22, 2026 Also in Science and experimentsA video worth knowingKurzgesagt asks when, exactly, a person diesIts animated explainer follows the body after the heartbeat stops, from failing neurons to immune cells still fighting near the ten-minute mark.Channel: Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell · Story of November 11, 2026 A different discovery todayVideo taking off 49x its usual first dayWomen in ITV's Power and Silence say David Walliams pursued them as teenagersTwo of the women were 15 when they met him. Walliams denies all wrongdoing, saying in a statement: "I am not a sexual predator".Channel: ITV News · Story of November 11, 2026

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A 28-minute lesson in probability, and a fast first day for it.

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