Early Beginning
The story of Scrabble’s evolution can be traced back to the Great Depression of 1929 in the US. An unemployed New York architect as a victim of that time period, Alfred Mosher Butts contrived Scrabble in 1933, calculating that Americans could use a little intrusion during the austere economic period. He amalgamated the three games- number games like dice or cards, board games and letters games such as crossword puzzles.
He made it as the most enduring game in world history. One hundred million sets sold-out worldwide. It sells between one and two million in North America each year. Butts combined traits of anagrams and crossword puzzles when trying to make a game that uses opportunity and skill. It was known as Lexiko first; later the game was renamed as Criss Cross Words. To determine the distribution of letters, Butts read the front page of the New York Times and made rough calculations of the font frequency. Butts’s primary cryptographic analysis of language and his actual tile distribution were valid for three generations and millions of games have been played.
Born of Scrabble Game
Established game makers were united in rejecting Butts’ creation for commercial development. Later on, Butts met game-loving founder James Brunots. Together, they made several changes to the rules and design, and most appreciably, made a decision with the game name “Scrabble”, which means catching madness. The game was branded in 1948 as the Scrabble brand crossword game. Brunots rented a jilted school house in Dodgington, Connecticut, where they played 12 games an hour with friends, printing letters on wooden boards at a time. Later on, the boxes, boards and panels were made elsewhere and shipped to the factory for shipping and assembly. You can win scrabble game using tools like scrabble word finder.
First four years had been a struggle. In the 1949, Brunots created 2,400 sets and unfortunately lost $ 450. In the gaming business, the Scrabble game acquired a moderate but steady fame among a very small number of users. In the primeval 1950s, according to legend, president of Macy founded the game during the presidential holidays. He ended up ordering some for his store. In a year, Scrabble games became a must have to the people in US.
In 1952, Brunots realized that games could not be made fast enough to satisfy the growing interest. They licensed Selchow & Righter organization, a reputed game maker company established in 1867, to market and circulate games in the US and Canada.
Change of Ownership
Selchow & Righter also had to increase production to meet the high demand for the Scrabble. As stories about it revealed in national magazines, newspapers, and on television, everyone immediately seemed to have a set. In 1972, Selchow & Righter acquired the trademark from Brunots, giving the company premier rights to each and every Scrabble products and amusement services in the US and Canada.
The famous Cabbage Patch Dolls COLECO Industries had taken over Selchow & Righter in 1986. COLECO declared bankruptcy three years later and its primary assets too- especially Scrabble Game and Acquisition – later it was acquired by Hasbro, Inc., holder of Milton Bradley, the country’s leading Sports Company.
Competitive scrabble games are much more popular than bridges and chess. Each year, the North American Scrabble Championship takes place in a major US city and the World Scrabble Championship is held in another country. Additionally, NASPA has declared 200 clubs and 400 tournaments in the US and Canada.
With more than half a million children playing in 18,000 schools across the country via the School Scrabble Program, the next generation of Scrabble players is steadily growing. Lots of students are currently participating in the state and regional championships throughout the expanse of the country. The first yearly National School Scrabble Championship took place on April 26, 2003 in Boston.
In fact Alfred Mosher Butts used to play Scrabble with friends and family for the rest of his life. At the age of 93, he died in April 1993.
Challenge continues
Scrabble has been translated from Arabic to African – into 22 languages. Strangely, the game is being sold by Hasbro’s rival Mattel Inc. outside the US. Hasbro has more than half of the $ 1.1 billion US game market. But in 1993 Mattel overtook Hasbro and paid $ 90 million for the international rights to the game. Hence the weird split homepage of the game on scrabble.com.
Earlier this year, Scrabble opera went viral when Hasbro and Mattel sued two brothers from Kolkata, India for launching their own online version of “Scrabble”. Scrobulus has finally become the most popular app on Facebook, attracting over 500,000 players to the social networking site every day. But brothers Jayant and Rajat Agarwal responded quickly and wisely to allegations of copyright infringement by introducing a convenient board called their new “WordScraper”.
Scrabble moves forward
Now Scrabble ranges from the Junior Edition to the CD-ROM: Standard, Deluxe, Deluxe Travel, French and Spanish.
NASPA has thousands of players with the official tournament rating, competing weekly with licensed clubs in the US and Canada. You can learn more about NASPA by visiting Scrabbleplayers.org. The tournament attracts over 500 professionals and competing senior Scrabble players who will take part in 31 two-on-one plays over a five-day period.
Fifth edition of the Scrabble dictionary was launched in 2014, later added almost 5000 plus words. For school seniors’ interested in Scrabble, National School Scrabble Tournament brings competitors together from the US and Canada to find the youngest Scrabble players to emerge. Students participating in the tournament are usually members of the school Scrabble Club, where they get to learn about the rules of game, rehearse their vocabulary, and acquire skill in the virtues of teamwork.
Teachers, parents, and coaches can visit www.schoolscrabble.us to know more about the contest and enroll students for the annual tournament in the spring. In the digital era, Scrabble Game has reached an advanced community of players with digitized versions from Hasbro assignee Electronic Arts. Available on Android devices, iPhone, iPod, and Facebook, these digital versions are a constant testimony to Alfred Mosher Butts and his amazing word game.