December 4, 2023: Board Game Studying: Scrabble

[On December1, 1948, a Connecticut inventor named James Brunot copyrighted a newboard game called Scrabble. Like many great games Scrabblehas endured and grown ever since, so for the 75thanniversary of that pivotal moment I’ll AmericanStudy it and a handful of otherboard games. I’d love your thoughts on these, others, and board games over fora competitive yet collaborative crowd-sourced weekend post!]

On threeexamples of the moments and stages through which a game becomes an icon.

In 1931,an out-of-work New York architect (this was the Great Depression, after all)and gaming enthusiast named Alfred Mosher Buttswrote an article entitled “A Study of Games.” Butts was a particular fan ofword games and puzzles like crosswords, and after analyzing countless examplesof the genre like those found in the NewYork Times he decided to invent a game of his own that could replicate theexperience of completing such puzzles but involve multiple competing players atonce. At first he calledthe game Lexico, and it required the players to write down the letters andwords themselves; but having had no luck marketing his proposed game tocompanies like Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley, in 1938 Butts added a boardcomponent, renamed thegame Criss-Cross Words, and began manufacturing copies himself.

Buttswasn’t able to make too many of those self-produced copies, but one of themfound its way into the hands of a Newtown, Connecticut social worker, Federalgovernment employee, and would-be game designer named JamesBrunot. Brunot and his family loved Criss-Cross Words and believed it hadpotential; in 1948 he bought the rights from Butts (offering to pay him aroyalty on every copy sold), changed a few of the rules and the name toScrabble, and received the copyright 75years ago this week. At first Brunotand his wife Helen likewise manufactured their own copies of the game,producing around 18 copies a day out of their Newtown home (which they renamedthe Production and Marketing Company). But for whatever reason—and I do thinkthe name change had something to do with it; Scrabble is a great name—demandwas much higher, and the Brunots sold 2400 sets in 1949 alone, moving productiontoan abandoned schoolhouse as it expanded.

The thirdof these pivotal stages is a bit more ambiguous and might even be apocryphal—butwhat is the story of an American icon without some legendary details? Asthe story goes, the influential president of Macy’s department store, JackStraus, played Scrabble while on a family vacation in 1952 and fell inlove; when he returned to work he was frustrated to see that his stores did notcarry the game, and demanded that they do so. Almost immediately the demandoutstripped what the Brunots were able to produce, and they licensedmanufacturing rights to the longstanding game company Selchowand Righter. No matter how much the Brunots were able to do, it’s unlikelythat a home-manufactured game could ever have achieved the widespreadpopularity that Scrabble has; so whether the Straus story is entirely accurateor not, there’s no doubt that the 1952 transition to both department storesales and an existing manufacturer was a key moment in Scrabble’s evolutionfrom quirky invention to one of the most successful board games in history.

Next boardgame tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other games you’d highlight for the weekend post?