Past notes: Scrabble
SCRABBLE
As Scrabble turns 70, Julian Humphrys spells out the origins of this ever-popular word game Who invented the game?
An unemployed New York architect called Alfred Mosher Butts. After analysing the games that were already on the market, he came up with the idea for one that incorporated aspects of crossword puzzles and anagrams but also involved an element of chance through randomly drawn letters. Butts worked out the frequency and the value of these letters by counting the number of times they appeared in a selection of newspaper pages. He launched his game, which he called Lexiko, in 1933.
Was it an overnight success?
No. Sales of Lexiko were slow; no major games manufacturer would touch it – even after Butts rejigged the game by adding a board in 1938 and renaming it Criss Cross Words.
Butts’ brainchild might well have sunk into obscurity but in 1948 a retired social worker called James Brunot approached him with an offer to manufacture and sell the game. Brunot brought in the now iconic colour scheme, made some minor tweaks to the rules, changed the game’s name to Scrabble and set up a factory in an abandoned schoolhouse in rural Connecticut. Brunot made 2,400 sets in the first year of business but the venture still made a loss.
So how did Scrabble take off?
Legend has it that Macy’s department store in New York placed a large order after its CEO, Jack Strauss, saw the game being played while he was on holiday in Florida. Sales rocketed and, although Brunot’s outfit was producing more than 2,000 sets a week, they were unable to keep up with demand.
In 1952 Brunot sold manufacturing rights to Selchow and Righter, one of the firms who had previously turned down Butts’s product. Two years later they made and sold nearly 4 million sets and, in 1972, they bought the trademark to the game.
Today, Scrabble is owned by Hasbro in North America, while international rights belong to Mattel.
How many sets have been sold?
Some 150 million sets have been sold worldwide. In the UK (where Scrabble was originally manufactured by Spears Games), it’s believed that one in two households own a set.