Happy Scrabble Day.
I love words, but I don’t love Scrabble (I prefer Trivial Pursuit.) I get frustrated when I don’t have the letter I want or when someone beats me to the perfect location on the board. I guess I like to be in control of my words.
However, Scrabble does have an interesting history, so in honor of today, let’s explore this wordy game with the help of Mental Floss.
- Alfred Mosher Butts created the first version of Scrabble in 1933. He decided how many tiles to use and their points by calculating the letter frequency in the articles on The New York Times’ front page.
- Butts originally called the game Lexico, and then Criss-Cross Words.
- The game hasn’t changed much. It still has the same number of squares and tiles.
- When you use all seven of your tiles to spell a word, it’s called a BINGO.
For more fun facts and scandals, read the entire Mental Floss article.
It may not be my favorite game, but I find it fascinating what can be done with a few letters and a game board.