Twister called itself "the game that ties you up in knots". Its detractors called it "sex in a box". Charles "Chuck" Foley – the father of nine who invented the game that became a naughty sensation in living rooms across the world because of the way it put men and women in compromising positions – has died. He was 82.

Foley died on 1 July. His son, Mark Foley, said on Thursday that his father had Alzheimer's disease.

Foley and a collaborator, Neil Rabens, were hired in the mid-1960s by a manufacturing firm that wanted to expand into games and toys. They came up with a game to be played on a mat on the floor, using a spinner to direct players to place their hands and feet on different coloured circles.

"Dad wanted to make a game that could light up a party," Mark Foley said. "They originally called it Pretzel. But they sold it to Milton Bradley, which came up with the Twister name."

The game became a sensation after Johnny Carson and Eva Gabor played it on the Tonight Show in 1966.

The game got plenty of innocent play, becoming popular in schools and at children's parties, but its popularity among teens and young adults also owed much to it being a body contact sport.

Players would become tangled up, and various body parts male and female would inevitably come into close and embarrassing proximity. Players would often lose their balance and fall on top of each other in a heap.

Hasbro, which now manufactures the game, said it continued to be a top seller. "What makes the Twister game timeless is the fact that it's always been about showing off your free spirit and just having some laugh-out-loud, out-of-your-seat fun," Hasbro said in a statement noting Foley's death.

Mark Foley said his father made little money from Twister but that never seemed to bother him much. The game was not his first invention and far from his last.

Foley was just eight when he made his first invention: a locking system for the cattle pen at his grandfather's farm. As a young man he worked as a salesman but his interest in games and toys led him to apply for a job at a toy company.

Over the years Foley invented dozens of other toys and games.

"He never stopped having fun," Mark Foley said. "He tried to think like young people thought. He never wanted to grow up and he always maintained his enthusiasm for seeing things through the eyes of a child."