The Word “Scrabble” Means To “Grope Frantically.”

Each year, on National Scrabble Day, April 13th, recognizes a game played around the world. National Scrabble Day commemorates the birth of Alfred Mosher Butts, born on April 13, 1899.

Originally named Lexiko, and then Criss-Cross Words, Alfred Mosher Butts eventually settled on the name Scrabble. The amateur artist and unemployed architect developed the word game in 1931, amid the Depression. Still, it wasn’t until 1948, after a final name change and a trademark that Butts finally began to produce the game.

• 1913 – Arthur Wynne’s “word-cross” puzzle appears in the New York World, sparking the crossword craze that later inspires word-board games like Scrabble.
• 1938 – Unemployed architect Alfred Mosher Butts refines his earlier ideas into a word game called Lexiko, using New York Times front pages to calculate letter frequencies and point values.
  • You’re not really a superfan if you don’t know these obscure Scrabble rules that even serious players may not know.
• 1948 – James Brunot bought the rights to the game and called it “Scrabble,” which means “to scratch frantically.”
• 1952 – Jack Straus, president of Macy’s, placed a large order for this game after playing it on vacation.
• 1978 – Merriam-Webster releases the first Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, standardizing acceptable words for North American play and fueling the growth of organized tournaments.
• 1984 – NBC launches the daytime game show “Scrabble,” hosted by Chuck Woolery, bringing the word game to a mass television audience and cementing its pop-culture status.
• 2004 – Scrabble was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame
• 2009 – Electronic Arts releases an official Scrabble app for smartphones and Facebook, introducing the classic board game to digital and social media platforms worldwide.
• 2019 – Merriam-Webster added over 300 words to the Sixth Edition of The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary. It is officially OK to use the word OK and these 14 other words added to the Scrabble dictionary.
• The word “scrabble” means to “grope frantically.”
• Worldwide, over 165 million sets have been sold, with nearly one-third of American homes containing them.
• Scrabble history notes that the president of Macy’s played the game while on vacation and ordered a few games for his store. Sales soared, and within a year the game was a huge hit, and stores around the country were rationing it.
• Merriam-Webster notes that the top words to win at Scrabble include qi, za, phoney, retinas, xu, zlotty, hook, gyoza, bingo, and amigo. You’ll also want to memorize these 30 little-known words that will help you score big.
• The Official Scrabble Dictionary now includes words like “hashtag,” “selfie,” “vlog,” “mojito,” “chillax,” and “beatbox.”
• A study in Psychological Research found that men and women play the game for different reasons. Men focus their energy on practicing anagrams and evaluating the game, while women are more apt to play Scrabble as a hobby. There’s another reason men do better at Scrabble than women.
• The most points possible in a turn of Scrabble: 1,782. To get that, a player would have to form the word oxyphenbutazone (it’s an anti-inflammatory drug) while also hitting three “triple word score” squares.
• Ganesh Asirvatham is the world’s top-rated Scrabble player by the World English Language Scrabble Players Association. He has played 636 games, winning 450, losing 185, and drawing 1. His high game score was 709, and his low score was 264.
• Every hour, worldwide, at least 30,000 Scrabble games are started.
• Down the sides of sofas, underneath carpets, eaten by children and pets alike; somewhere in the world, there are over a million missing Scrabble tiles.
• If all the Scrabble tiles ever produced were lined up, they would stretch for more than 50,000 miles!
• The original version of Scrabble, Lexico, did not have a board and was played with tiles only.
• According to Money Inc., Scrabble ranks fifth, behind Chess, Checkers, Backgammon, and Monopoly.
• Scrabble is available in Braille.  
• English Scrabble has 100 tiles. Most tiles are in Italian and Portuguese Scrabble, which both have 120 tiles.
• A study in Psychological Research showed that men and women play the game to meet different needs. Men focus their energy on practicing anagrams and evaluating the game, while women are more apt to play Scrabble as a hobby.
• Richard Nixon regularly played Scrabble in the White House. Other aficionados included Queen Elizabeth, John Travolta, Mel Gibson, and Vladimir Nabokov.
• The tile sets you buy at your local store likely have engraved letters, which aren’t legal in tournament play. “Players could braille the letters or at least know when they are drawing a blank,” says David Koenig, who has played tournament Scrabble since 2002 and was ranked in the top 10 players in North America. Tournament-legal tiles have letters that can’t be identified by touch, and players must hold the bag above eye level when drawing tiles.
• Attention Super Scrabble players who are getting bored playing with mere mortals: There is a new kid on the block, a robot equipped with AI and a camera. News flash: the robot wins every game but doles out consolation prizes.
• Scrabble in music:
  • Frank Sinatra added nine games of Scrabble to his take on the 12 Days of Christmas in 1968.
  • Kylie Minogue complained that the subject of her song “Your Disco Needs You” was “useless at Scrabble.”
  • In his song, “You Can Have the TV,” Barry Manilow also said that you can keep the Scrabble game, too.
• As the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary does not consider Y a vowel, the following two-letter vowel-less words are legal: by, hm, mm, my, and sh. There are also 34 three-letter words, 32 four-letter words, 38 five-letter words, and 24 six-letter words without vowels. As for seven-letter words, glycyls, rhythms, and tsktsks are the only three that are acceptable.
• Best two-letter words:
  • ax
  • ay
  • by
  • ef
  • eh
  • em
  • ex
  • hm
  • ka
  • ki
  • my
  • ok
  • op
  • oy
  • qi
  • sh
  • uh
  • up
  • we
  • xi
  • xu
  • za

Sources:

National Day Calendar

Readers Digest

Portable Press

The Fact Site

Gamesver

New England Historical Society

National Today

Days of the Year