History of Scrabble — From 1938 to Today
Scrabble didn't start as a board game empire. It started as a Depression-era architect's hobby project, rejected by every major game company, and nearly forgotten before a department store executive's vacation changed everything. The journey from Alfred Butts' kitchen table to 150 million sets sold worldwide is one of the great underdog stories in gaming history.
1938 — Alfred Butts Invents Criss-Crosswords
Alfred Mosher Butts was an unemployed architect in Poughkeepsie, New York, when he began designing word games during the Great Depression. He studied the front page of The New York Times to calculate letter frequency, counting how often each letter appeared to determine point values and tile distribution. His system was remarkably accurate — the relative frequencies he established in 1938 remain largely unchanged in modern Scrabble sets.
💡 The Letter Frequency Method
Butts analyzed newspaper text to determine that E appeared most frequently, followed by T, A, O, I, N, S, H, and R. He assigned 1 point to common letters and up to 10 points for Q and Z. This mathematical foundation is why Scrabble scoring still feels fair and balanced nearly 90 years later.
He called his creation "Criss-Crosswords" and handmade sets from plywood and small tiles, selling them to friends and family. Between 1938 and 1948, Butts approached multiple game companies including Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers. Every single one rejected him. They saw no commercial potential in a word game that required a vocabulary and patience to play.
1938
First prototype
100
Tiles per set
NYT
Letter source
0
Companies interested
1948 — James Brunot Takes the Leap
James Brunot, a retired government worker, played Butts' game at a friend's house and saw its potential. In 1948, he bought the manufacturing rights from Butts for a royalty on every set sold, simplified the rules, rearranged the premium squares on the board, and gave the game its permanent name: Scrabble (meaning "to scratch frantically"). He and his wife began producing sets by hand in their Newtown, Connecticut home.
✅ Brunot's Key Changes
Simplified scoring rules, redesigned the board layout with better premium square placement, created the distinctive star center square, and invented the name "Scrabble" — all improvements that made the game more accessible and marketable.
📉 Slow Start
In their first year, Brunot and his wife made 2,400 sets and lost $450. The game grew only through word of mouth for four years. Without the lucky break that followed, Scrabble might have remained an obscure cottage product.
1952 — The Macy's Moment
The turning point came in 1952 when Jack Straus, president of Macy's department store, played Scrabble while on vacation. When he returned and discovered his store didn't carry it, he placed a large order. The Macy's endorsement triggered a cascade of demand that Brunot's small operation couldn't handle. Within months, he was receiving orders for thousands of sets per week.
1952
From 2,400 sets/year to 4 million sets by 1954
One vacation game played by one department store executive created an unstoppable chain reaction. Brunot licensed manufacturing to Selchow and Righter, who had the factory capacity to meet demand. The game went from obscurity to cultural phenomenon in under two years.
1953-1986 — Selchow & Righter Era
Brunot licensed manufacturing to Selchow & Righter in 1953, unable to keep up with demand from his home workshop. The company turned Scrabble into a household name, expanding distribution across North America and licensing international editions. By the late 1960s, Scrabble was sold in over 120 countries and translated into dozens of languages, each with unique tile distributions reflecting local letter frequencies.
Tournament Scrabble begins (1973): The first official Scrabble tournament was held, marking the beginning of competitive play. This created demand for standardized rules, official dictionaries, and rating systems that would define the game's competitive future.
First World Championship (1991): Held in London, the inaugural World Scrabble Championship attracted players from 20 countries. Peter Morris of the USA won the first title, establishing a tradition that continues biennially today.
Dictionary wars: The question of which words are valid led to the creation of the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (OSPD) in 1978 and the Tournament Word List (TWL). International players developed SOWPODS by combining British and American word lists.
1986-Present — The Hasbro & Mattel Era
Coleco acquired Selchow & Righter in 1986, then went bankrupt. Hasbro picked up the North American rights in 1989, while Mattel secured international rights through a separate deal. This split ownership persists today and explains why tournament rules and official word lists differ between North America (TWL/NASPA) and the rest of the world (Collins/WESPA).
🌐 The Digital Revolution
The internet transformed Scrabble from a living-room game into a global competitive sport. Online platforms enabled thousands of rated games per day, accelerating player development and making competitive play accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Mobile apps brought Scrabble-style gameplay to hundreds of millions of casual players.
Today Scrabble is played in over 120 countries with an estimated 150 million sets sold worldwide. Competitive tournaments draw thousands of players annually, with prize pools reaching tens of thousands of dollars. The game that one unemployed architect invented on his kitchen table during the Depression has become one of humanity's most enduring intellectual pastimes.
150M+
Sets sold
120+
Countries
29
Languages
88 years
And counting
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