Inventor Charles Foley said that a good game has to involve “a bit of skill, a bit of chance, sticking it to an opponent—and watching it has to be entertaining.” He and a co-inventor hit all those marks in 1966 when they invented Twister, a party game that intertwines players in sometimes intimate contortions. The game became a sensational hit in an era when everyone seemed eager to break down social barriers. “If you take your shoes and socks off,” Foley once said, “anybody will become a different person.”
Born in Lafayette, Ind., Foley was an inveterate tinkerer who came up with his first invention—an automatic latch for a cattle pen—at age 8, said the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He dropped out of school after the eighth grade, and served in the Michigan Air National Guard before taking a job at the Reynolds Guyer House of Design in St. Paul, Minn., where he and his partner, Neil Rabens, came up with Twister, which they originally called Pretzel.
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