“Aggravate or be aggravated” may not strike one at first as being a particularly sound concept for a board game. The fun is not lost for those familiar with Aggravation, a game of subtle nuance, precision timing, and marble-losing hysteria.

Aggravation surfaced in 1960, promising to unite generations around a common board for a “classic marble race.” The point A to point B concept seemed as simple as any other race, and but for its namesake, it surely would have been. As one tried to race four marbles from Base to Home, however, one inevitably encountered various obstacles, perils, and other, well… aggravations, not the least of which were competitors’ marbles. Aggravation combined not only the thrill of the race, but the chill of the showdown, with each marble’s mantra being “This space ain’t big enough for the both of us.”

Play began with a die roll of one or six, the key numbers required to usher a solitary marble out of the safety of one of four Bases and onto the hazardous board proper. From there, every marble made its clockwise trek with every toss of the fickle die. Other marbles joined the pilgrimage with each additional one or six, clogging the pathways and complicating the dynamics. To make things all the more unpredictable, shortcuts provided a means of speedy travel, including the rare and risky "super shortcut.” But despite high rolls and shortcuts, as any Aggravation marble can tell you, the journey of a thousand steps sometimes takes more than that.

The titular "aggravation" comes into play whenever any marble lands on another. In this instance, the former finds itself quite aggravated as it is shuttled all the way back to Base, where the journey of a thousand steps must begin - once again - with a single step. An exhaustive supply of accusations might spring from this simple “aggravation,” including “excessive aggravation,” “calculated aggravation,” and “holy aggravation,” just to name a probable few. Safety could only be secured inside the four Home spaces, one for each marble. As soon as all four marbles made it to safety by the grace of exact rolls, a winner was proclaimed, marble gods were thanked, and losing players were taunted, all in the timeless spirit or board gamesmanship.

Eventually, Deluxe Aggravation added two more players, bringing the total and the standard to six. In the early 1970s, Lakeside even went so far as to create a Split-Level Aggravation that brought the game into the third dimension. While the multi-tiered version failed to excite quite like the original, many a winsome wanderer pulls the game out from under the bed, summons the favorable will of the die, and casts him/herself into a “classic marble race” - and an aggravating one, at that.