For Stanford, Scrabble is a kind of homegrown pastime. The board game was invented during the Great Depression by Alfred Mosher Butts, who was born in Poughkeepsie in 1899 and lived in the Town of Stanford in his later years, although he invented the game while living in Jackson Heights, Queens. He died in 1993 and is buried in the Stanford Cemetery.
The history of Scrabble’s invention is well known to the game’s lovers: Butts received a degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania in 1924. He was out of work in the 1930s and came up with the idea of inventing a word game. He was a lover of chess, crosswords and jigsaw puzzles, according to his obituary, which appeared in the New York Times on April 7, 1993. He combined the skills required in crosswords and anagrams to create a game he called, at first, “Lexiko.” To determine how many of each letter to include in the game, Butts counted all the letters on the front page of the New York Times and calculated the relative frequency of each letter that appeared there.
For years, Butts played the game with family members, but success did not start to come until 1948 when a friend offered to help market it and came up with the name Scrabble. Even then, it took until 1952 for the game to take off, with Macy’s stocking it in “the world’s largest department store” on Herald Square in New York City.
Scrabble lovers will gather to maximize their scores and test their skills in the annual Bangallworks and Town of Stanford Scrabble tournament on June 17, at 11 a.m.
Those yearning to test their skills need to register by June 12. The $15 entry fee includes a barbecue lunch and convivial competition. Entry forms are available by calling 917-929-9221 or emailing info@bangallworks.com. The tournament will be held at Bangallworks, a co-working and community-building space, at 97 Hunns Lake Road, in Bangall.
