Today is National Scrabble Day. As a writer, you’d think this would be my number one favorite game. While I love playing it, there are a few other word games that I prefer. However, I’m always up for a game of Scrabble and I love watching people play.
The history behind the game is interesting. Scrabble was invented in 1938 by Alfred Mosher Butts in Jackson Heights, New York.
Butts was an amateur artist working as an architect in New York. When he was unemployed in the 1930s, he became determined to create a board game. He studied the existing games of the time to understand the market and what was already created. Seeing that there were three main categories of games — movement games like checkers, number games like bingo, and word games — Butts decided on word games and combined elements of the two popular games of the day, anagrams and crossword puzzles.
Butts analyzed the English language and calculated how often each of the 26 letters was used. From there, he determined the number of times he would include the letters, as well as the weight (point value) of each letter. He didn’t want to make it too easy!
Originally, Scrabble was named Lexiko. It was later called Criss-Cross Words after Butts made some changes in how the game was played. In 1948, Butts teamed up with James Brunot to help him manufacture and distribute the game. Brunot changed the name to Scrabble and made a few tweaks, such as simplifying the rules.
Sales grew slowly until 1952 when then Macy’s president, Jack Straus, discovered the game and added it to the store’s offerings. Due to the new high demand for Scrabble, James Brunot’s factory was unable to keep up with production and licensed the manufacturing rights to a local game company, Selchow and Righter, that went on to purchase the trademark in 1972.
Scrabble is now produced in the United States and Canada by Hasbro and by Mattel everywhere else. It has influenced numerous other games, such as Boggle, Words with Friends, and Scribbage. There are online versions, travel versions, versions in other languages, video games, competitions, dictionaries, and even TV game shows, one of which was hosted by Chuck Wollery in the 1980s.
From an inspired idea to a trial-and-error development process in Alfred Butts’ living room to the larger-than-life game we all know today, Scrabble is firmly embedded into our gameplay.
Celebrate National Scrabble Day.
Grab your Scrabble board and dictionary, and let’s play!
#NationalScrabbleDay
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