Lawrenceville inventor's idea of board game finally pays off 

Atlanta Journal-Constitution 

GEORGE CHIDI

Wendy Hampton hasn't quit her day job. Yet.

Her first royalty check hasn't yet arrived yet, either. It's for a board game the Lawrenceville inventor created.

A national inventor talent search discovered Hampton and her board game, Befudiom, in 2005. Since then, the public television series "Everyday Edisons" has turned her idea into a commercial product.

Now she's bumping into people at the supermarket who recognize her from the show, or from her picture in Reader's Digest. And she's eagerly awaiting the financial reward for a couple of years of work.

"I don't know if I can put it into words," she said. "It's like hitting a jackpot."

Hampton created the game to stave off the boredom of her daughter, Taylor, she said.

"She just came to me on a Saturday afternoon. We just had so much fun that day that we never stopped," she said.

Befudiom combines charades, drawing and other games to get players to guess idioms. An idiom such as "a can of worms" — a complicated situation — might be pantomimed or drawn, or perhaps described $25,000 Pyramid-style, de-pending on the roll of a die.

Hampton, a credit-and-collections manager at Hussmann Corp. in Suwanee, first thought she might be able to get the game into the marketplace on her own, she said. The task proved to be a can of worms, indeed. Facing high marketing and development costs — upwards of $50,000 — she left the idea on the shelf for a while.

"When you're looking at being an inventor and you're an everyday person, you have an idea and you sit on it for a while," she said.

One Friday while she was driving to work, though, she heard a casting call for the television show on the radio. She had a day to prepare.

"I was calling it 'Shop Talk' then," she said.

Mostly, she wanted to see if the legion of engineers and marketing experts at the audition thought the idea was worth pursuing, Hampton said. She didn't expect to be chosen.

"I think for me, it was really going to see if what I thought was a great idea could be validated," she said.

The show chose 14 inventors, including Hampton. Everyday Edisons invested between $300,000 and $500,000 on each product, said Meredith Beck, a spokeswoman for the show.

"It's really hard to get in front of a big retailer like Milton Bradley or Johnson & Johnson," she said. "We give inventors the resources they need."

Now Hampton's game is available for purchase online and from some retail stores. Merriam-Webster has given the game its endorsement — the game is called Merriam Webster's Befudiom now.

Hampton's life hasn't changed tremendously, yet. She still drives to work. Taylor, now 15, goes to Peachtree Ridge High School.

"Most people think it's an overnight success story," Hampton said. "It takes a lot of patience and, initially, a lot of perseverance if you have an idea that you're passionate about."