ORIGIN OF SCRABBLE
The game of Scrabble is the perfect example of innovation and perseverance. Invented by an out-of-job architect called Alfred Mosher Butts during the Great Depression, Scrabble was originally known as Lexico and then Criss-Cross Words. As it later came to be known, Scrabble is a combination of vocabulary skills, anagrams, crossword puzzles and an element of chance. Butts studied and analyzed the cryptography of the English language to decide on how many tiles of each consonant and vowel to be included in the game as well as the value to be assigned to each letter. He drew the boards with his architectural drafting equipment, reproduced it by blueprinting and then pasted it on checkerboards. The tiles were lettered by hand, stuck on paper and then cut to match the squares on the checkerboard.
Although, his first attempt to sell the game were a failure, he and his partner James Brunot persisted by refining the rules and design of the game. They named it Scrabble and trademarked it in 1948. The first few years were tough, but in early 1950s, the President of Macy discovered the game while on vacation and ordered some for his store. That was it. There was no looking back after that. The game became hugely popular and everyone simply had to own Scrabble. Unable to keep up with the growing demand, Butts and Brunot licensed Selchow Righter Company to market and distribute the game in the US and Canada, and then later purchased the trademark thereby acquiring all the rights to Scrabble.
