April 13 - National Scrabble® Day

Happy National Scrabble® Day! On April 13 each year, today recognizes a game played around the world.  

  

Originally named Lexiko and then Criss-Cross Words, American architect Alfred Mosher Butts eventually settled on the name Scrabble®.  

  

The amateur artist and unemployed architect developed the word game in the midst of the depression. Still, it wasn’t until 1948, a final name change and a trademark that Butts finally began to produce the game. 

  

Scrabble® is played with two to four players who score points by forming words from individual lettered tiles on a game board marked with a 15 x 15 grid. 

In the United States, the name Scrabble® is a trademark of Hasbro, Inc. Scrabble® is sold in one hundred and twenty-one countries with twenty-nine different language versions! 

Worldwide, over one hundred and fifty million sets have been sold with sets being found in nearly one-third of American homes. 

• 
  • 1984 – Scrabble became a daytime game show on NBC 
• • 2004 – Scrabble was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame 
• • Some cities sponsor Scrabble tournaments on the weekend closest to National Scrabble Day 
• • The word “scrabble” means to “grope frantically.” 

HOW TO OBSERVE 

  

Call your friends and play a game or two of Scrabble®! Feel free to mix it up as well. There are several ways to play the game if you want to change things up a bit.  

For example, if you’re spending time alone, Scrabble® solitaire challenges you at your own game of words.  

Another version allows players to only play nouns but they earn bonus points for playing nouns that are both a proper noun and an approved Scrabble® word.  

Once you’ve played a game, take the final board and create a crossword puzzle using the template by visiting the website below. Develop hints to the words and see if others can solve the puzzle.

https://n7jmr7muhj-flywheel.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Scrabble-Crossword-Puzzle-Template.pdf  

Do you have fun alternative ways of playing the game? Use #NationalScrabbleDay to post on social media. 

HISTORY 

National Scrabble Day commemorates the birth of Alfred Mosher Butts, born on April 13, 1899. However, the research by National Day Calendar® had not identified the founder of the day. 

#NationalScrabbleDay 

@hasbrogaming 

@nichecinema