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.
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.
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