What Is the Origin of Scrabble?

While the Great Depression bore much economic turmoil, it also gave way to what has become one of the most popular board games to date: Scrabble.

Who invented Scrabble?

After being laid off from his job during the Great Depression, New York architect Alfred Mosher Butts decided to invent a word game as a means of distraction during tough economic times. Despite living to see the game grow worldwide, Butts died in 1993 having never reaped a fortune off his popular invention.

Origins of Scrabble

When Butts initially designed the game, he named it Lexico--how he came about this name is unknown. There was no board, 10 letters were used at a time, and players received points based on the length of the words formed, not on a point scale given to each individual letter. The game was submitted to two manufacturers, Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley, both of whom rejected Lexico. Influenced by crossword puzzles, in 1938 Butts revised the game to include a board, reduced the number of tiles held by each player from 10 to seven, and added point values to them depending on their frequency. After undergoing several name changes, Butts finally landed on Criss-Crosswords. Again, the game was rejected by manufacturers. However, after being rehired and with the start of World War II, Butts shelved his gaming ambitions. That is, until 1948, when James Brunot, one of the Criss-Crosswords first owners, decided to market the game. Butts handed over production of the game and, in return, Brunot promised him a royalty on every game sold. After making a few changes to the board and the point system, Brunot also altered the name to what it is known as today: Scrabble.

Sales Growth

The new version of the game went into production in 1949. Initially sales were slow until 1952, when word-of-mouth recommendations help bolster the number of units sold from 2,251 to 37,000.
In 1952, Scrabble sales were also helped by Macy Chairman Jack Strauss. After playing the game while on holiday, Strauss went back to Macy's and demanded to know why the store did not carry it. A problem that was quickly resolved. In 1953, with production at 6,000 units a week, Brunot licensed the manufacturing rights to a company called Selchow and Righter. As sales continued to climb, so did the game's global penetration, reaching Australia in 1953. Eventually, Brunot sold the rights to Scrabble in 1968 to Selchow and Righter. The game manufacturer was sold in 1986 to Coleco, which then underwent bankruptcy in 1987. Hence, the game eventually landed in the product portfolio of Milton Bradley.

Scrabble World Championships

London held the first championship games in 1991, followed by New York City in 1993.

Popularity

To date, Mattel reports more than 100 million copies of the game have been sold in 121 countries and in 29 different languages.

References

• Scrabble
• NPR