Today is Scrabble Day, a day created to celebrate Scrabble, and since it’s Who Knew Wednesday, we told you a ton of fun fact about Scrabble.
Did you know Scrabble is an actual word? It means to scratch vigorously.
In 1938, American Alfred Mosher Butts created the game as a variation on an earlier word game he invented called Lexiko. He called the game “Criss-Crosswords,” added the 15×15 gameboard and the crossword-style game play.
n 1948, James Brunot, a resident of Connecticut – and one of the few owners of the original Criss-Crosswords game – bought the rights to manufacture the game in exchange for granting Butts a royalty on every unit sold. Mr. Brunot simplified the rules and also changed the name of the game to “Scrabble”, a real word which means “to scratch frantically”. Scrabble‘s big break came in 1952 when Jack Straus, president of Macy’s, played the game on vacation. Upon returning from vacation, he was surprised to find that his store did not carry the game. He placed a large order and within a year, Scrabble was a household name.
Andrew from Mt. Vernon was our winner of a $5 gift certificate to Pier House coffee shop of Troyer’s of Apple Valley, for correctly answering our trivia question: What was inventor Butts’ day job? Answer: He was an architect.
We shared some Scrabble strategies that you can find by clicking here.
We also told you about how Bingo and Scrabble are connected. When a player uses all 7 of their Scrabble tiles in a single play, it’s called Bingo. Plus, when you get a Bingo, 50 additional points are added to the score of your word!
Our Word of the Day was oxyphenbutazone, which is the highest scoring word possible in a game of Scrabble. Oxyphenbutazone is an anti-inflammatory, and will score you a nice 1,778 points. You can read some of the other highest-scoring words over here.
Have a wonderful Wednesday evening!
-Jess & Joe
Driving Notes 