History of Scrabble

 

Before 1930's

In 1880 Scrabble was anticipated by Lewis Carroll.  An entry in his diary notes "A game might be made of letters, to be moved about on a chess board till they form words".  In January 1, 1895 he wrote to Winnifred Hawke about a game very similar to Scrabble also drawing letters from a bag.

1930's the Inventor Alfred Butts

The inventor of Scrabble was Alfred Mosher Butts an unemployed architect in Poughkeepsie, New York.

He analyzed games into 3 types: number games such as dice, bingo and card games, move games with a board such as chess and checkers and word games such as anagrams and crosswords. 

He decided to combine anagrams and a crossword puzzle.  His aim was half luck, half skill, not all luck or all skill.  To decide on letter distribution, Butts studied the front page of the New York Times counting letters.

Butts lived in Jacksonville Heights and church socializing in his neighborhood was how Scrabble was originally played.

Trivia about Butts included that he saw Scrabble playing as social like Bridge and didn't see the point in memorizing word lists.

1930's and Lexico

The first version of Scrabble was called Lexico.  It used 100 tiles and no game board.  You make words for as long as possilbe while drawing and discarding from your hand like Rummy but make words instead of melds.

You want to be the first to complete a 9 letter word and lay it face up on the table and go out with the other players laying out words of 4 - 9 letters for points.

Lexico used a distribution of letters like the English language.  There were points for minor honors (B, F, H, M, P, V, W and Y) and major honors (J, K, Q, X, Z).

Too many S's made the game too easy so S's were reduced to 4 only.

The patent for Lexico was turned down.  Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley refused to manufacture Lexico.

Lexico sold 200 copies.

In 1939 Butts stopped making Lexico.

1930's and Criss Cross Words

The next version of the game was called Criss Cross Words.  It was briefly called It.  Criss Cross Words boards were handdrawn with architectural drafting equipment and pasted on folding checker boards.  Tiles were hand lettered and glued to balso and cut to match squares on the board.  At this time the board was added, the blank tiles, premium squares and specific point values for tiles.  Criss Cross Words first sold for $2.  At this time the number of tiles drawn was reduced from 9 to 7 so you had better odds of using all your tiles.  Criss Cross Words had a 15x15 board and 7 tile racks like today.

The patent was turned down again as Beckwith had a similar patent for a crossword anagram game which was never manufactured.

Butts sold Criss Cross Words from 1938 - 1942.  In 1942 he met a bookseller named Charles Ives who made Criss Cross Words from 1942 - 1943.

The total outcome of the 1930's was that established game manufacturers unanimously rejected Butt's invention for commercial development.

1940's and James Brunot

Butts met James Brunot, who had played an original version of the game.  Brunot refined the premium squares, simplified rules, added the bingo rule and changed the start to the middle of the board.  Brunot changed the name to Scrabble and trademarked the name and board in 1948.

Scrabble is a real word which means to grope frantically and was chosen as a name as it sounds like scramble as in anagram scrambles.

Original manufacturing was done in an abandoned schoolhouse in Dodgington, Connecticut at 12 games an hour.

Brunot paid Butts a royalty for each game sold.  Altogether Butts made $265,000 for Scrabble while Brunot made more than a million.

Brunot only sold 2,000 sets in the first year and sales stayed sluggish until 1952.

In 1949 Brunot made 2,400 sets and lost $450.

1950's and Macy's

The president of Macy's discovered the game of Scrabble on vacation and ordered some for his store.  Within a year everyone had to have one and Scrabble sets were rationed to stores.

In 1952 the game was licensed to Selchow and Righter Company to market and distribute games in US and Canada.

All of a sudden they were making 6,000 sets a week.  In 1952 37,000 sets were sold.  In 1953 800,000 sets were sold.  In 1954 4,000,000 sets were sold.

A deluxe version was sold for $10 with white plastic tiles as you could cheat feeling the wooden tiles.

1970's

In 1972 Selchow and Righter purchased the Scrabble trademark from Brunot.

In 1978 the first National Scrabble Championship was held.

1980's

In 1984 Scrabble turned into a daytime game show on NBC.  Scrabble ran from July 1984 to March 1990 and January to June 1993 and was hosted by Chuck Woolery.

James Brunot died in October 1984.

In 1986 Selchow and Righter sold to Coleco Industries.  In 1989 Coleco went bankrupt and Scrabble and Parchesi were bought by Hasbro, owner of Milton Bradley Company.

1990's

Competitive Scrabble play was started.  A National Scrabble Championship is held every year in a major US city and in alternate years the World Scrabble Championship is held.  The National Scrabble Association holds 180 tournaments and 200 clubs in the US and Canada.

Scrabble has a school Scrabble program to encourage Scrabble playing in schools for educational value.

In April 1993 Alfred Mosher Butts passed away.

In 1991 the first World Scrabble Championship was held in London.  The 5th was held in Melbourne in 1999.