History of Scrabble

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A Scrabble board with tiles

Alfred Butts, invented the board game Scrabble that is one of the most successful board games of the twentieth century. Butts was an unemployed architect living in New York in the 1930's when he began devising a word game using letters printed on small cardboard squares. Tiles later replaced these cardboard squares.

Butts called his game 'Lexiko' and there was no board. The board was added later when the game changed its name to 'It' and then to 'Criss-Cross'. Butts made a few sets to sell to friends. Nobody paid attention to his game. In 1948 James Brunot thought it might have commercial possibilities. Brunot and his wife began making the game and renamed the game ‘Scrabble’.

The Brunots only sold 2,000 games in their first year. Sales remained sluggish until 1952 when the owner of one of the largest department stores in the United States, who had played, told his toy company to stock it. Other toy shops followed suit and the rest, as they say, is history.

In 1975 Scrabble was voted 'Game of the Year' by readers of Games and Puzzle magazine. Even mountaineer, Chris Bonnington and his colleagues, spent their evenings playing Scrabble while ascending the south face of Annapurna.

Game rules

Scrabble is played by at least two players. Each player draws out seven letter tiles from a bag that contains all of the tiles. Each player places his tiles on a special rack that hides them from the other player. Each tile has a number value. Using the tiles in his possession, the player must try to form real words and place them on the board. The first player places his tiles in the centre of the board where there is a special marked square. The next player must form his word using one of the letter tiles of the previous player. An expert player can regularly score more than 400 points.

Today, there are versions of the game in many languages. Some of these are French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Greek and Arabic, each with its particular set of letters.