Favorite Board Game ~ Scrabble

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An architect named Alfred Mosher Butts of Poughkeepsie, New York was fascinated with games back in the early 1920's. He defined three different types: move type games such as checkers or chess, number games such as bingo or dice and word games like anagrams. The word games weren't very popular due to them not being scored. He began to mix cross word puzzles with anagrams elements and came up with a scoring word game called LEXIDO. During the 30's and 40's he refined it into one he called CRISS CROSS WORDS. It is said that he began to study the New York Times and other sources to determine a frequency analysis of letters. He manufactured some sets himself with 15 x 15 game boards but was not successful in selling any to any major company . It wasn't until 1948 that James runot who was an owner of one of the few CRISSCROSS WORDS game bought the rights and began to manufacture the game giving Butts royalties on every game he sold. Brunot rearranged the board and and renamed it SCRABBLE a word which means "to scratch frantically". The game didn't reach any popularity until in 1952 when a vacationing Jack Straus played the game. He was president of Macy's and when he found that the store didn't carry the game he put in a large order for some. Within a year it was popular and everyone had to have one of them. The rights to the game has gone from Selchow and Righter in 1972 to J.W, Spears with Milton Bradley Company and Parker Brothers having rejected the game. In 1984 Scrabble became a daytime game show on NBC. It ran from July 1984 until March of 1990. Scrabble is played in tournaments around the world. Three out of ever five American homes has a SCRABBLE GAME in it's game collection.