The History of Scrabble

Origins

• During the economic bleakness of the Great Depression, former architect Alfred Butts began thinking about a new game to help people pass the time. Through scientific examination of the available games on the market, he chose a word game that equally relied on chance and skill. Butts even studied the pages of the newspaper to determine which consonants and vowels appeared most often in common terms and phrases. Then he based the game's foundation on a chess board and assigned point values to the tiles.

Names

• Scrabble may be a household word today, but the inventor's idea went through several names before the current one was attached in 1948. The original title was "Lexico," and further incarnations included "New Anagrams," "Alph," and "Criss-Crosswords." Under these names, the game was rejected by all the major game producers of the day, including Parker Brothers.

Scrabble Discovered

• For years, Butts contented himself with hand-making a few hundred games. That jumped to a couple of thousand games produced each year when he joined forces with James Brunot, a friend and investor, in 1948. As word spread, demand for Scrabble began to rise. The game's big break happened when the chairman of Macy's Department Store enjoyed Scrabble on a trip, and demanded that his store carry it. This action boosted Scrabble's public image and soon 6,000 Scrabble sets were sent out every week.

Corporate Turnover

• Through the process of corporate mergers and acquisitions, Scrabble has passed through the hands of several companies. Brunot licensed the game to the Selchow and Righter company in the early 1950s.Thirty-six years later, Selchow and Righter was purchased by Coleco, who went out of business the following year. Those assets were snapped up by Milton Bradley, one of the original companies in the 1930s that rejected Butts' game. Scrabble is still produced by that company today, which is currently a division of Hasbro.

Championships and Products

• With millions of units sold, Scrabble has evolved from a simple board game to a brand with worldwide recognition. The game is available in every format from travel size to CD-ROM and Braille, championships are held both nationally and globally, and there's even an official Scrabble dictionary to settle word disputes.