Scrabble | board game | Britannica.com board game go Scrabble, board-and-tile game in which two to four players compete in forming words with lettered tiles on a 225-square board; words spelled out by letters on the tiles interlock like words in a crossword puzzle . Players draw seven tiles from a pool at the start and replenish their supply after each turn. Tiles in the pool and those of other players are kept secret so that a player can see only those tiles on the board and his own. A player may forfeit his turn and exchange any or all of his tiles for those in the pool. There are 100 letter tiles, each imprinted with a point value for different letters, approximately corresponding to the frequency of occurrence of the letter in English words. Words are scored by adding up the point values of their letters, multiplied by any of 61 premium squares that may be covered, such as double letter, triple letter, double word, and triple word. Scoring as the game advances is possible both horizontally and vertically, with higher scores registered by forming two or more interlocking words at the same time.

At the end of the game, when one player has no tiles or the board is deadlocked, the player who has scored the greatest number of points is the winner. Values of unused letters left to players are totalled and deducted from their scores. Originally called Criss Cross, the game, which was based on the crossword puzzle and anagrams, was developed by Alfred M. Butts, an architect, in 1931. It was redesigned, renamed as Scrabble, and marketed by James Brunot in 1948. It was first sold in Great Britain in 1954. Scrabble was later produced in many foreign languages, Braille, and magnetic editions and continued to be one of the leading board-and-tile games in the United States . Tournaments have been held in the United States since 1973. Similar Topics What was Scrabble’s Original Name? | Dictionary.com Blog Home » History » Language » What was Scrabble’s Original Name? What was Scrabble’s Original Name? March 26, 2011 by: Dictionary.com 54 Comments Great things can come out of hard times — take Scrabble .

During the Great Depression, architect Alfred Mosher Butts couldn’t find work. So he decided to create a board game that required the vocabulary skills of anagrams and crossword puzzles but also had an element of chance. Butts hand-drew the original board with architectural drafting equipment. He also hand-lettered the tiles. He studied the front page of the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, and The Saturday Evening Post to calculate the frequency of each letter in the alphabet and then came up with a point value system. At first, the game was named Lexiko. Then he called it Criss-Cross Words. Butts’ story was not one of success from the start. He tried and failed to sell Criss-Cross Words to game manufacturers. Milton Bradley rejected the game in 1933. James Brunot came on board as a business partner, and renamed the game Scrabble, which means “to scratch or scrape” and “to scrawl.” (On the topic of game names, have you ever wondered what “sudoku” literally means? Here’s the answer .) Then Butts and Brunot set up a Scrabble factory in an abandoned schoolhouse in Connecticut.

Times were tough until Macy’s began selling the game in the early 1950s. Soon people around the country were eager to test their vocabulary skills with the game. Do you consider yourself a Scrabble whiz? Test yourself with these Scrabble facts. What is the OSPD4? The OSPD4 is The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, Fourth Edition. How many two-letter words are in the OSPD4? There are 96 two-letter words. The official Scrabble site encourages players who want to improve their scores to begin by memorizing these two-letter words. Do you want to get caught brailing ? Absolutely not! Brailing is Scrabble terminology for feeling the surface of a tile with your hand in the bag. At Scrabble tournaments how many points is the average? The experts average 330-450 points per game. On a related note, learn the original name of crossword puzzles, here .

The board game Scrabble was originally called “Criss Cross Words” by inventor Alfred Butts | 77Facts.com Home / Sports / The board game Scrabble was originally called “Criss Cross Words” by inventor Alfred Butts The board game Scrabble was originally called “Criss Cross Words” by inventor Alfred Butts VN:F [1.9.22_1171] Rating: 0 (from 0 votes) 386 views Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * Name * Website Comment You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong> Get an Awesome Fact Daily Email Address Comments | November 20, 2013 Pineapples has proteins that degrade meat. Many people who work in pineapple plantations have obscured or removed fingerprints. | November 8, 2013 The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.

| November 10, 2013 Early Board Games Early Board Games Posted July 18, 2014 by Amanda | No Comment Do you love playing board games with your family? Most cultures and societies have been playing board games throughout history. From ancient Egypt and Rome to our homes today, board games have been a staple of entertainment for families all around the world. Here’s a brief history of some early board games, some of which we still play today: The Mansion of Happiness The Mansion of Happiness / Library of Congress The first board game to be manufactured in the U.S. was “The Mansion of Happiness.” Designed by Anne Abbot, the game was first issued in 1843. Players would hop along the spiral board with the goal of reaching the happy mansion at the end. The game was played with a teetotem, a small top inscribed with numbers instead of dice, which were associated with gambling. Like many early board games from this time, the game emphasized Christian principles and values.

The Landlord’s Game The Landlord’s Game patent / Library of Congress (click to zoom) Patented by Elizabeth Magie on January 5, 1904, The Landlord’s Game was a realty and taxation game designed to be a “practical demonstration of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences.” Although there were many similar games being played at the time, this game was the first of its kind to be patented. She would eventually sell the patent to Parker Brothers for $500. If the game sounds familiar to you, well it should. The Landlord’s Game served as the inspiration to the popular board game, Monopoly. Scrabble Scrabble / Spear’s Games Archive In the early 1930s, architect Alfred Butts set out to design a board game. After studying a number of existing games, he found that all games fell into three categories: number games, move games, and word games. With this in mind, Butts sought to create a word game that would utilize both chance and skill by combining the elements of anagrams and crossword puzzles.

He initially called the game “Lexiko,” but later changed the name to “Criss Cross Words.” He eventually sold the rights to his game to entrepreneur James Brunot, who made some adjustments and re-named the game “Scrabble.” When the chairman of Macy’s discovered the game, he instantly loved it and stocked the store’s shelves with it. The game soon exploded in popularity and has sold over 150 million sets worldwide. What were your favorite board games to play growing up? Share your stories with us in the comments below! Post written by Amanda Amanda is the Social Media Coordinator at Geni. If you need any assistance, she will be happy to help! See all posts by Amanda Share: Most Popular Toys Of The Last 100 Years Most Popular Toys Of The Last 100 Years comments, called-out The holiday shopping rush is on, and retailers and parents across the nation are all asking the same thing: What is this year’s “must-have” toy going to be? The new Furby? The Roboraptor? The Xbox 360 gaming console?

With so many new toys and games hitting store shelves every year, it may be a little surprising that many of the most popular playthings are actually quite old. But people have been playing for a very long time. In 4000 B.C., Babylonians played a board game that was probably the ancestor of chess and checkers. Stone yo-yos were first used in ancient Greece around 1000 B.C. Kites appeared in China around the same time, though historians speculate that they have probably been flown since before recorded history. The 20th century saw the invention of dozens of much-loved toys as well. Still-popular board games like Tripoley, Sorry and Monopoly have been around since the 1930s, and Crayola Crayons are more than 100 years old! Twister, made by a division of Hasbro , sold more than 3 million games within a year of its release in 1966. It has sold more than 22 million since then. Ready for a trip down memory lane? Click here to see a slideshow of some of the most popular and the best-selling toys of the past 100 years.

Toys aren’t always a hit the year, or even the decade, they’re created. Unemployed architect Alfred Mosher Butts invented the game of Scrabble, which he first called “Lexiko” and later “Criss-Cross Words,” in the 1930s. Entrepreneur James Brunot acquired the game in 1947, but it wasn’t until 1953, when the president of Macy’s– now owned by retail giant Federated Department Stores –discovered the game on vacation that things really took off. More than 100 million sets have since been sold worldwide. The fortunes of other playthings are more cyclical. Troll dolls, which hit big during the 1960s, had all but disappeared by the 1980s until troll nostalgia ushered in a second boom in the early 1990s. As Generation Xers grow older, toys like Cabbage Patch Kids, now made by Mattel , and Koosh balls could stage a comeback as well. And there’s serious money to be had. Mr.

Potato Head , made in 1952 by Hasbro’s Playskool unit, was the first toy advertised on television, and it grossed more than $4 million in its first year (that’s $30 million in 2005 dollars). Play-doh, which was originally designed for cleaning wallpaper, made inventor Joseph McVicker a millionaire by his 27th birthday. And Mattel sells an astounding 1.5 million Barbie dolls each week–that’s two dolls per second. With the help of our friends at the Toy Industry Association, we’ve put together a slideshow of some of the best-selling and best-loved toys of the past 100 years. Click here for some fun facts about these fabulous toys. 10 Origin Stories Behind Famous Board Games - Toptenz.net Toptenz.net Posted by Robert Grimminck on May 25, 2016 in Games | 4,461 Views | Leave a response The board game market is one of the toughest to break into. Thousands of games are released every year and throughout all of history only dozens have broken through and become mainstream hits.

These are 10 of those select few games that somehow managed to become rainy day staples. NOTE: Since humans have been playing some games like Chess, Checkers, and Mancala for thousands of years, their origins aren’t clear, so they were omitted from this list. 10. Risk Originally called La Conquête du Monde (The Conquest of the World), Risk was invented by Academy Award winning French film director Albert Lamorisse. Lamorisse, who is most famous for his 1956 short film “ The Red Balloon ,” invented the game while on a family vacation in Holland. The game takes strategic elements of chess, but the playing area is much more expansive and up to six people can play, which complicates the strategy. Also, with the dice, there is an added element of randomness. Originally, Lamorisse said the game should take 90 minutes to play , but if you’ve ever played Risk, you’ll know that the first 90 minutes of the game are just the set up and opening turns. Lamorisse took the game to Miro, a French board game company, and they manufactured the first games in 1957.

In 1959, the game was purchased by Parker Brothers, who made some minor tweaks and renamed the game Risk . Lamorisse continued to make movies after inventing the game, but sadly, he was tragically killed in a helicopter accident in Iran in June 1970 while filming. 9. Settlers of Catan In the 1980s, Klaus Teuber was running a dental lab outside of Darmstadt, Germany, and, in general, he wasn’t happy with his work life. For a bit of escapism , he took up making board games. His first game, Barbarossa (a clay-shaping guessing game), was a hit in 1988 after he won the prestigious Spiel des Jahres award, which is awarded to the best German board game of the year. After his initial success, Teuber created a few more games, and won two more Spiel des Jahres awards, but he was still working at the dental lab. In 1991, Teuber was reading about Vikings and the Age of Discovery and it sparked the inspiration for Settlers of Catan.

He said a major breakthrough in the game came when he realized he should use hexagonal board pieces instead of square pieces, as this allowed for more areas to play in the same amount of space. The game was an instant bestseller in Germany when it was released in 1995 and Teuber claimed his fourth Spiel des Jahres award. In 1996, Catan made its way to American hobby shops and slowly gained a small, but devoted following. In 1998, Teuber finally quit working at the dental lab because he was making a living off his games. Sales of Catan continue to increase each year and as of 2015, it has been translated into 30 languages, sold over 22 million copies , inspired spinoffs, and the rights for the movie and the TV show were purchased. 8. Cranium In the 1990s, Seattle-based Microsoft employees Richard Tait and Whit Alexander were trying to think of a business to start. At first, they were thinking a dot-com company, but they thought that the space was already too crowded.

In 1997, Tait came up with the idea that would become Cranium after a weekend of intense board gaming with his wife and another couple. During that weekend, Tait noticed that there was a gap in the board game industry; a lot of games were based on only a small segment of skills. For example, with Scrabble, you need pattern recognition, planning, bluffing, strategy, and a big vocabulary, but not much else. Also, those skills don’t translate well to a game like Pictionary. What was missing was a game that utilized a variety of skills. A single game that challenged different skills would mean that there was a good chance anyone who played it would be really good at one aspect, and completely horrible at another. This would make the game uniquely inclusive. After coming up with the basic premise of the game, over breakfast Tait convinced Alexander that they should leave their high paying jobs with Microsoft to go make a board game, even though there hadn’t been a massive, hit board game since Pictionary in 1984. With the odds stacked against them, in early 1998, they put $100,000 into a prototype.

Then, instead of trying to get it stocked in stores, they took a rather unique approach to sales. Tait had recently climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with a friend of Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, and the friend set up a meeting between the makers of Cranium and Schultz. They ended up playing a few rounds of Cranium and Schultz liked the game. He had been looking for something similar to put in Starbucks, and agreed to put games in 1,500 stores so that customers could play. Through Starbucks, Tait and Alexander learned that people would highly recommend the game . To help spread the word-of-mouth recommendations, they gave games to Starbucks employees and patrons, and by the time the holiday season rolled around, Tait and Alexander couldn’t keep up with orders. Soon, Barnes and Nobles and Amazon started selling the game and it became a runaway hit. In 2008, Cranium was purchased by Hasbro for $77 million . After the purchase, Tait and Alexander, who held the titles of Grand Poo Bah and Chief Noodler, respectively, left the company. 7.

Pictionary Creator Rob Angel first came up with the basics of Pictionary in 1981, and he would break out the game at parties when festivities had reached a lull. He would pick a word out of the dictionary and then try to get people to guess what he was drawing . He never really thought much about selling the game until the Trivial Pursuit phenomenon in 1984, when the creators sold 20 million copies in just over a year. Seeing the potential in his game, Angel started to work on it in 1985. Angel realized that the key to the game was getting the right words. Most people have an active vocabulary of about 20,000 words, but there are 171,476 active words in the English language (a number that continues to grow over the years, as well). Also, not everything can be drawn. That meant just randomly picking words from the dictionary wouldn’t work, so Angel, who was working as a waiter at the time, picked up the dictionary and started reading it. He also had a friend design cards and a board.

With a $35,000 loan, they went around to local stores and sold them some copies. Then Seattle based retailer Nordstrom ordered 167 copies. This caught the attention of 58-year-old Thomas McGuire, who was a salesman for the board game company Selchow & Righter. After playing the game with his family, McGuire quit his job to sell Pictionary with his own marketing company, and it was published by Western Publishing Group Inc. By Christmas season 1987, Pictionary was the bestselling game of the year with three million copies sold. In 1994, Western sold its gaming section , including Pictionary, to Hasbro for $105 million. 6. Candy Land The quintessential game for children, Candy Land, is full of bright colors and pretty imagery, but its origins are actually fairly depressing. The game was developed by retired schoolteacher Eleanor Abbott in 1948. Abbott was in a San Diego hospital for polio and she, and the children in the ward, were bored. So Abbott used a piece of butcher paper and drew up the plans for Candy Land .

The game was popular among children in the ward and they encouraged her to submit it to Milton Bradley, who agreed to produce the game. The game became a surprise bestseller for the company. In hindsight, there were a few factors that contributed to its success. One reason is that it was easy enough that most children could play it; there’s no reading, no counting, and no real skill involved other than deciphering colors. Secondly, in the Post-War period, Americans had more disposable income and it was the start of the Baby Boom, so toys and games, especially ones directed at very young people, exploded in popularity. Finally, during the polio outbreak of the 1950s, people weren’t encouraged to go out in public , meaning they spent more time inside and away from other people. Thus, games that could be played in the home were in high demand. Milton Bradley, which was taken over by Hasbro in 1984, kept the origin story of Candy Land quiet for decades because they didn’t want the colorful, upbeat game for children to be linked with a horrifying and deadly disease. The story was finally made public in 1998 when a 50th anniversary edition game was released.

5. Trivial Pursuit The origin of Trivial Pursuit has a bit of a mythical aura around it. Various versions of the story exist, but here is what we do know for sure. It happened on the night of December 15, 1979, in Montreal, Canada. Chris Haney, a high school dropout who worked as a picture editor at the Montreal Gazette, and Scott Abbott, a sports journalist for The Canadian Press, were playing some Scrabble. According to some stories , they spent the night drinking like Wade Boggs (years later, Haney said they only had one beer …but since it was Saturday night, and they were newspaper men working in Montreal in the late 1970s, we’re guessing the true number of beers was quite a bit north of that claim). Either way, somewhere in there, an idea for a new game was born. How Haney and Scott were able to transition their drunken idea into a cultural phenomenon involved a bit of conning and hustling. First, they attended a toy makers convention under the guise of a journalist and a photographer who were doing a story on bringing a board game to market. Through this ploy, they got a lot of insider information for free.

Then they spent the next two years writing 10,000 questions before dwindling it down to 6,000. Finally, the game was released in 1981, just as the United States was going through a recession, which had a massive effect on the cost of production for first the 1,000 copies. It cost them $75 to make the game and they were only selling it for $15. This caused them serious problems when they tried to order more games because they didn’t have the funds. Haney and Scott also couldn’t get a traditional loan because they had been connected with a pyramid scheme. Instead they took on 32 investors, who all chipped in $1,000. Luckily for the investors, the game exploded in popularity shortly after they handed over their money. People would line up for hours or drive hundreds of miles to buy the game. By 1984, more than 20 million copies of Trivial Pursuit, which amounted to nearly half a billion dollars in sales, had been sold in North America. In 1988, Trivial Pursuit was purchased by Hasbro for $80 million .

With his new found riches, Haney partied hard and developed medical problems later in his life. He passed away on May 31, 2010, at the age of 59. 4. Scrabble Born in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1899, Alfred Mosher Butts was always a good student, and attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he pursued an architecture degree and played on the school’s chess team. After school, he got a job as a draftsman, designing suburban homes. When the Great Depression struck, Butts’ salary was cut by 20 percent in 1930, and he was laid off in 1931. Like many other people at the time, he didn’t hold a steady job for years. During that time, he tried his hand at writing, did some painting, and worked as a statistician. He found a little bit of success in all them, but wasn’t able to build a new career for himself. Another project that Butts started working on when his salary was cut was a board game that mixed anagrams, chess, and crossword puzzles.

Butts’ first thought was to design a game that involved making words, using letters on tiles. Next, he scanned the newspapers and culled the most common letters in the English language, and devised a point system on their usage. He also thought that drawing letters from a pool would add a level of randomness, which would level the playing field in terms of skill. In October 1933, Butts started selling the first incarnation of the game, which he called Criss Cross Words , out of his apartment in New York City. Originally, the game didn’t have a board; it was just letters with number values glued onto pieces of plywood, and the tile holders. Over the next 10 months, Butts tweaked the rules and added a board and by August 1934, he had sold 84 copies of the game for $1.50, which brought Butts to a grand total of a loss of $20.43. He tried to get a patent on the game, twice, and tried to find manufacturers, but had no luck. In 1935, Butts’ architectural firm began to get more business and he went back to designing homes.

Twelve years after Butts stopped selling Criss Cross Words, James Brunot, who was the director of the President’s War Relief Control Board during World War II, got in touch with Butts. Brunot was a fan of Criss Cross Words and wanted to buy the rights to it. He would manufacture and market the game under the name Scrabble . For each copy sold, Butts would get two-and-a-half cents, and Butts agreed. Over the next few years, Butts’ slightly modified game sold moderately well, but it didn’t take off until 1952. That summer, the president of Macy’s was vacationing in Long Island and saw people playing the game, so he decided to stock it. By 1954, they sold 3,798,555 copies of the game, including 100,000 foreign language copies and a Braille edition. In 1971, Butts agreed to sell the rights of Scrabble to one of the companies that originally turned him down in 1934, Selchow & Righter, for $265,000.

Butts believed he made over $1 million on Scrabble, but it ultimately didn’t change his life much. He continued to work as an architect until 1978. After that, he invented another board game called Alfred’s Other Game , but not many copies were sold. In the fall of 1987, Butts was in a car accident that he never fully recovered from, and he died in April 1993. 3. Clue Board games are quintessential for times when you can’t leave the house, and in England during World War II, Britons who were suffering Nazi bombings and blackouts had some very good reasons to stay inside. Anthony Pratt, of Birmingham, was working in a factory and thought that the bombings were killing the social lives of the British, so he invented Clue‘s precursor, Murder! In 1944, he filed a patent for the game. Pratt’s neighbor had just published a popular game called Buccaneers with Waddington’s Games in Leeds, and this led to a meeting between Pratt and Waddington’s in 1945. Waddington’s liked the game and agreed to sell it with a few minor changes.

Notably, some of the characters were changed; there would no longer be a Dr. Black, and a bomb and a syringe were no longer weapons, for example. Also, the name of the game was changed to Cluedo . The problem with the game was that a lot of materials were needed to manufacture it, and England was still rationing material so the game wasn’t released until 1949. When it was released, it was also licensed by Milton Bradley for overseas sales, sold under the name Clue. Success didn’t come in the first few years and in 1953, Pratt agreed to sell his royalty on overseas sales for £5,000, which is about £130,000 today ($188,000 USD). In hindsight, this was a massive mistake because the game took off and has since become the second bestselling game of all time, along with spawning a movie and television series . Pratt never got rich or famous from inventing one of the best known board games of all time, and he died in 1994 at the age of 90. 2.

Monopoly Monopoly, aka The Great Destroyer of Friendships , got its start in 1903 in Washington, D.C., when it was designed by stenographer Elizabeth Magie. Magie was a progressive, single woman who saved up her money and purchased her own house, which was fairly unusual for the time. At night, she tried to teach people about the dangers of possible monopolies brought on by the large accumulation of wealth by a small group of people , which was going on during the Gilded Age with families like the Carnegies, the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, and the Morgans, who gained massive amounts of wealth and controlled major industries. However, she didn’t think she was reaching enough people. To spread the word and show how problematic a monopoly is, Magie designed The Landlord’s Game and patented it in 1904. However, instead of mass producing it, it became a folk game and was passed along from person to person. All someone had to do was copy the board and playing pieces. For years, the game spread throughout the Northeastern United States. Then in late 1932, an unemployed Philadelphia man named Charles Darrow played the game with friends.

He enjoyed it and he drew his board on a tablecloth. He took the game to Parker Brothers, who bought it and agreed to pay Darrow a royalty. Knowing that Darrow’s game was based Magie’s patented game, Parker Brothers agreed to buy the rights to The Landlord’s Game and two other games created by Magie for $500. Then, in an unbelievable jerk move, Parker Brothers didn’t mass produce The Landlord’s Game, instead releasing Monopoly in 1935. It became an instant success – and one for which Magie was not entitled to receive any royalty or recognition. Charles Darrow went on to be rich and famous. When he was asked where he got the inspiration, he said it was just one of those amazing freak eureka moments . He passed away in 1978 after becoming the first millionaire game “designer.” Magie passed away in 1948 without being given proper recognition for her work. 1. The Game of Life In 1860, Milton Bradley was 24-years-old and owned a lithograph studio in Springfield, Massachusetts, that sold a popular picture of Abraham Lincoln, who was running for President at the time.

That’s when something unusual happened, and forever changed American culture. On October 15, 1860, 11-year-old Grace Bedell from Westfield, New York, sent Lincoln a letter, encouraging him to grow a beard, and amazingly Lincoln wrote back…and agreed to do so ! When Lincoln grew his beard, not only did people no longer want Bradley’s lithograph, they wanted their money back for the ones they had already purchased. Seeing his business was in trouble, Bradley, who had worked as a draftsman, started working on a board game that depicted the drastic ups-and-downs that happen in life (gee, we wonder what his inspiration for that could have been?). His game was on a checker board and a teetotum, which is a top, was used for the dice. The object of the game was to collect 100 points by landing on the right squares. You could lose points by landing on squares labeled “Disgrace,” “Crime,” and even “Suicide.” He called the game The Checkered Game of Life. The game was an immediate success, and in 1864 he launched Milton Bradley and Company, one of the most famous board game companies in history.

Bradley died on May 30, 1911. The modern Game of Life was published in 1960, 100 years after Bradley first started selling The Checkered Game of Life…all because an 11-year-old girl asked Abraham Lincoln to grow a beard. Robert Grimminck is a Canadian freelance writer. You can friend him on Facebook , follow him on Twitter , follow him on Pinterest or visit his website . The history of all kinds of games is vast and varied. 10 obscure facts for National Scrabble Day FacebookEmail Twitter Google+ LinkedIn Pinterest 10 obscure facts for National Scrabble Day It's time to scan through the dictionary and brush up on obscure words, because today is National Scrabble Day. Post to Facebook 10 obscure facts for National Scrabble Day It's time to scan through the dictionary and brush up on obscure words, because today is National Scrabble Day. Check out this story on USATODAY.com: CancelSend A link has been sent to your friend's email address. Posted! A link has been posted to your Facebook feed.

2 To find out more about Facebook commenting please read the Conversation Guidelines and FAQs 10 obscure facts for National Scrabble Day USA Today Network Mary Bowerman , USA TODAY Network Published 8:42 a.m. ET April 13, 2015 | Updated 9:12 a.m. ET April 13, 2015 Happy National Scrabble Day! 4116 CONNECT TWEET 5 LINKEDIN 2 COMMENTEMAILMORE It's time to scan through the dictionary and brush up on obscure words, because today is National Scrabble Day. Alfred Mosher Butts invented the board game where players use lettered squares to make words in a crisscross puzzle fashion in 1933. The game is sold in 121 countries with 29 different language versions. Here are 10 things you might not know about the popular board game. 1. Each year National Scrabble Day falls on April 13, the day that Alfred Mosher Butts was born in 1899. 2.

Scrabble was originally called LEXIKO and was referred to as Criss Cross Words in the 1930s and 1940s. It wasn't trademarked Scrabble until 1948. New Scrabble dictionary adds 5,000 words 3. S-E-L-F-I-E and H-A-S-H-T-A-G along with 5,000 other words were added to the official Scrabble Players dictionary issued by Merriam-Webster in 2014. Players no longer have to worry about creating a F-R-E-N-E-M-Y when they use popular words like B-R-O-M-A-N-C-E and T-E-X-T-E-R. 4. Scrabble isn't all fun and games. Some players have made Scrabble their life's work. Nigel Richards, a New Zealander based in Malaysia, is the world's "strongest player," according to Hasbro. Richards travels around the world to Scrabble tournaments, and has won the World Scrabble Championship three times and the National Scrabble Championship five times. 5.

"Brailing" or feeling the surface of a tile when your hand is in the bag is forbidden in Scrabble play. 6. There are 187,632 words on the official tournament and club word list. 7. X-E-R-O-X. X is considered one of the hardest letters in Scrabble, but the tiles that will gain the most points, 10, are Q and Z. The tiles with the fewest points, 0, are blank tiles. (Photo: Kimm Anderson, Times photo by Kimm Anderson, ka) 8. Wait is that even a word? Next time D-A or Z-A show up on the scrabble board, don't cause a fuss. There are 105 playable two-letters words in a regulation Scrabble game, according to the Official Scrabble players' dictionary. 9. Grade school spelling bee champions might want to compete in the next North American School Scrabble championship. One hundred school- aged Scrabble players in the U.S. and Canada will head to Rhode Island for the 2015 championship on May 15 at the Hasbro headquarters.

History of SCRABBLE General Information History of SCRABBLE ALFRED MOSHER BUTTS combined chance and skill to invent the game that has become an American cultural icon. Even though it’s a word game, the real story behind SCRABBLE® Brand Crossword Game is numbers. One hundred million sets sold world-wide. Between one and two million sold each year in North America. And, of keen interest to legions of passionate players, over 120,000 words that may be used in their scoring arsenal. The story of the game’s evolution from underground craze to cultural icon is as American as, well, the SCRABBLE game. Alfred Mosher Butts, an out-of-work architect from Poughkeepsie, New York, decided to invent a board game. Analyzing games, he found they fell into three categories: number games, such as dice and bingo; move games, such as chess and checkers and word games, such as anagrams. Attempting to create a game that would use both chance and skill, Butts combined features of anagrams and the crossword puzzle. First called LEXIKO, the game was later called CRISS CROSS WORDS.

To decide on letter distribution, Butts studied the front page of The New York Times and did painstaking calculations of letter frequency. His basic cryptographic analysis of our language and his original tile distribution have remained valid for almost three generations and billions of games played. Established game manufacturers were unanimous in rejecting Butts’ invention for commercial development. Then Butts met James Brunot, a game-loving entrepreneur who became enamored of the concept. Together, they made some refinements on rules and design and, most importantly, came up with the name “SCRABBLE,” a real word which means “to grope frantically.” The game was trademarked SCRABBLE® Brand Crossword Game in 1948. The Brunots rented an abandoned schoolhouse in Dodgington, Connecticut, where with friends they turned out 12 games an hour, stamping letters on wooden tiles one at a time. Later, boards, boxes and tiles were made elsewhere and sent to the factory for assembly and shipping. CRISS CROSS WORDS, an early version of the SCRABBLE game, featured a gameboard made of architectural blueprint paper glued onto an old chess board. The first four years were a struggle.

In 1949 the Brunots made 2,400 sets and lost $450. As so often happens in the game business, the SCRABBLE game gained slow but steady popularity among a comparative handful of consumers. Then in the early 1950s, as legend has it, the president of MACY’S discovered the game on vacation and ordered some for his store. Within a year, everyone “had to have one” to the point that SCRABBLE games were being rationed to stores around the country. In 1952, the Brunots realized they could no longer make the games fast enough to meet the growing interest. They licensed Long Island-based Selchow & Righter Company, a well-known game manufacturer founded in 1867, to market and distribute the games in the United States and Canada. Even Selchow & Righter had to step up production to meet the overwhelming demand for the SCRABBLE game. As stories about it appeared in national newspapers, magazines and on television, it seemed that everybody had to have a set immediately.

In 1972, Selchow & Righter purchased the trademark from Brunot, thereby giving the company the exclusive rights to all SCRABBLE® Brand products and entertainment services in the United States and Canada. In 1986, Selchow & Righter was sold to COLECO Industries, who had become famous as the manufacturers of the Cabbage Patch Dolls. Three years later, COLECO declared bankruptcy, and its primary assets — most notably the SCRABBLE game and ParchesiTM — were purchased by Hasbro, Inc., owner of Milton Bradley Company, the nation’s leading game company. Today the game is found in one of every three American homes, ranging from a Junior edition to a CD-ROM with many versions in between including: Standard, Deluxe with turntable, Deluxe Travel, Spanish and French. Competitive SCRABBLE game play is widely popular much in the manner of chess and bridge. Every year, a National SCRABBLE® Championship is held in a major US city, and on alternate years the World SCRABBLE® Championship is hosted between Hasbro and Mattel.

In addition, the National SCRABBLE® Association sanctions over 180 tournaments and more than 200 clubs in the US and Canada. The next generation of SCRABBLE players is steadily growing with over a half million kids playing the game in more than 18,000 schools nationwide through the School SCRABBLE Program. Hundreds of these students currently compete in state and regional championships across the country. The first annual National School SCRABBLE® Championship was held in Boston on April 26, 2003. Classrooms can also subscribe to the School SCRABBLE® News which includes a teacher edition complete with tested ideas and a lesson plan designed to meet nationally mandated educational goals, and a student issue chock full of feature stories and puzzles. Alfred Mosher Butts enjoyed playing the SCRABBLE game with family and friends to the end of his life. He passed away in April 1993 at the age of 93. HASBRO is the owner of the registered SCRABBLE® trademark in the United States and Canada. © 2011 HASBRO. All rights reserved.

"SCRABBLE® Brand Crossword Game" is the proper way to refer to this unique group of word games and related properties marketed by HASBRO. "SCRABBLE®" is not a generic term. To use it as such is not only misleading but also does injustice to the company responsible for the trademark's longtime popularity. All we ask is that when you mean SCRABBLE® Brand Crossword Game, you say so. The SCRABBLE® trademark is owned by J.W. Spear and Sons, PLC, a subsidiary of Mattel, Inc. outside of the United States and Canada. For more information about SCRABBLE® or the NSA, or to comment on or correct the contents of this page, please e-mail: info@scrabble-assoc.com . For information about SCRABBLE® tournaments please visit our partner organization, NASPA .

To report technical difficulties in reading this page, please contact webmaster John Chew at: poslfit@gmail.com 20 Words You Should Learn if You Play Scrabble | HowStuffWorks 20 Words You Should Learn if You Play Scrabble John Gichigi/Getty Images Sport/ Getty Images You can say you don't care if you win or lose at Scrabble, but you may very well be in the minority. Even President Barack Obama , one of United States' most high-profile Scrabble enthusiasts, isn't above boasting about his wins. "It's his favorite game to play," said White House communications director Robert Gibbs in a 2008 interview reported in The Independent. "He'll play with his family and particularly his sister. And the winner gets bragging rights for a long, long time" [source: McSmith]. And Obama's not the only famous Scrabble devotee. President Richard Nixon was an avid player. So is actor Mel Gibson, who plays the game while waiting on the movie set. Author Vladimir Nabokov, famous for his novel "Lolita," was a skilled player. Even Queen Elizabeth II is reported to enjoy a royal game of Scrabble [source: McSmith ].

Not bad for a pastime invented during the Great Depression. In 1931, out-of-work architect Alfred Mosher Butts came up with a game that he first called Lexiko, then Criss Cross Words. He spent several years tinkering before settling on the rules, now familiar to all Scrabble players: You draw seven letters and try to make words on a board with a 15-by-15 grid. Each letter scores specific points that roughly go along with how hard it is to fit the letter into a word. If an opponent challenges an unusual word, it had better be in the dictionary, or you'll have to remove it and lose a turn. Butts's game didn't meet with much success initially. But in the 1940s, another game maven, James Brunot, took over. He renamed the game Scrabble and by 1952, it had become a sensation [source: NPR ]. Scrabble aficionados, like the ones mentioned above, may memorize long lists of unusual words to win their bragging rights. But casual players can improve their games by learning just a handful of useful entries.

You can impress -- and even beat -- your friends by blitzing them with high-scoring words, or by sneaking in common but strategic words that get rid of unwanted letters. Remember to make use of the double and triple squares to leverage your score on almost any word. And always look for what players call a "bingo," the 50 extra points you get for using all your tiles on one play. Now let's look at 20 words that every Scrabble player should know. Scrabble History - Invention of the Scrabble Board Game inventor Alfred Butts What has 100 tiles...225 squares...a multi-colored board...and millions of fans of all ages, backgrounds and locales? The answer, of course, is SCRABBLEï¿½ Brand Crossword Game which took America by storm in the early 1950s-and has continued to grow in popularity. In 1931 Alfred Butts translated his lifelong love of crossword puzzles into a board game. Mr.

Butts, attempting to create a game that would use both chance and skill, combined features of anagrams and the crossword puzzle-and called his new game "Criss Cross Words." The game was strictly a home entertainment for his family and friends. Many of the friends to whom Mr. Butts supplied handmade sample But the established game manufacturers to whom he submitted his invention were unanimous in rejecting it for commercial development. Mr. Butts, again busy as an architect, put aside his efforts to develop the game. In 1948, Mr. and Mrs. James Brunot, owners of one of the original Criss Cross Words sets, thought the game should be marketed. Brunot had made one or two changes to the game, including the rule about starting across the middle instead of in the top left corner, and, perhaps more inspirationally, changing the name to Scrabble. Mr. Butts authorized the Brunots to manufacture the game Under a new arrangement between the two, Brunot would manufacture and market the newly named game through his business facility, the Production and Marketing Company. The first four years were a struggle. Mr. Brunot kept his regular job.

In 1949, the Brunots made 2,400 sets and lost $450. However, year by year, the orders increased as news about the game spread, mainly by word of mouth.Then, in 1952, the Brunots left for a trip to Kentucky, returning to find their little factory deluged with orders. Obviously, the game was no fad. They licensed Selchow and Righter Company, a well-known game manufacturer, to market and distribute the games in the United States and Canada. Even Selchow and Righter had to step up production to meet the overwhelming demand for the SCRABBLE game. In 1972, Selchow and Righter purchased the trademark SCRABBLE from Brunot, thereby giving them the exclusive rights to all SCRABBLE Brand products and entertainment services in the United States and Canada. Sales have gone steadily upwards, and today SCRABBLEï¿½ Brand Crossword Game is one of the leading board games in America, and by far the most popular word game. Today, Scrabble ranks (just below Monopoly) as the second best-selling game in U. S. history.

In April of 1993 the game's inventor Alfred Mosher Butts died at the age of 93. During 1995, historian Jeffrey Saunders of Jackson Heights, Queens, New York, uncovered some materials that prompted the SCRABBLEï¿½ world to rethink the original "invention" date of the game. While Alfred Butts was clearly tinkering with word game ideas as early as 1931, it's now believed he may not have focused on the board game idea which led to SCRABBLEï¿½ until a few years later. In the summer of 1996, the Butts family, the National SCRABBLEï¿½ Association and the Milton Bradley Company agreed to conduct a formal study to determine the correct chronology. Many believe 1938 may emerge as a more accurate date. TO LEARN MORE the unofficial homepage for tournament players. (URL: DID YOU KNOW?: The boards for his first Criss Cross Words game were hand drawn with his architectural drafting equipment, reproduced by blueprinting and pasted on folding checker boards. The tiles were similarly hand-lettered, then glued to 1/4 inch balsa and cut to match the squares on the board.

One of their first concerns was protecting the game through a unique brand name.The Brunots and their friends made up long lists of potential trademarks. SCRABBLEï¿½ Brand Crossword Game came out with top honors and was cleared legally. SCRABBLE. The name, which means "to grope frantically," was trademarked in 1948. At one time the opening word was played near the upper left corner of the board. In the summer of 1995 the first $100,000 SCRABBLEï¿½ Superstars was held in Las Vegas with the top 50 rated players. The National SCRABBLEï¿½ Association sanctions over 150 SCRABBLEï¿½ tournaments in the U.S. and Canada every year and over 200 official SCRABBLEï¿½ clubs. The world's largest SCRABBLEï¿½ board is nearly eight feet square, it was constructed by the Milton Bradley Company. SCRABBLEï¿½ is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned by Hasbro Inc., Hasbro Canada Inc. and by J.W. Spear & Sons, PLC.

Reference Sources in BOLD Type This page revised April, 2005. FEATURED

Question: Which popular board game was originally called ‘Criss Cross Words’?
Answer: Scrabble