Do You Know Where Scrabble Originated?

It's National Scrabble Day! Scrabble is a very fun game where players get points for spelling words and it can get pretty competitive. It's a pretty common game to see in the stores and I was surprised when I found out where it was made.

A Little History

According to Wikipedia, the game that we know today was created by James Brunot. Originally, it was called Criss-Crosswords and that game was created by Alfred Mosher Butts in 1938. Unfortunately, he couldn't get any big companies to buy it. Brunot was one of the few people that bought Criss-Crosswords and in 1948 he was able to buy the rights from Butts to manufacture the game, but gave Butts a royalty on every game sold.

Brunot kept some elements of the original game, but did change some things, including the name. In an old schoolhouse in Dodgingtown, which is a part of Newtown, the first sets of "Scrabble" were produced.

Wikipedia notes that the big break for Scrabble was, supposedly, in 1952 when the president of Macy's played the game while he was on vacation. Surprised that his store didn't sell the game, he put in a pretty big order, and that was the start of Scrabble's popularity.

You can find out more about the history of Scrabble on Hasbro's website.

So, there it is. The game Scrabble originated in Newtown, CT. Pretty cool little piece of trivia!

Happy National Scrabble Day!

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