Scrabble ®...History of a Word Game

Alfred Butts, inventor of Scrabble®. Click on picture for complete biography.

Back in 1931, in the depths of the depression, an out of work architect Alfred Mosher Butts developed a board/word game he called Lexiko. Today we all know it as the classic word game Scrabble®. In determining the letter distribution, he took the front page of The New-York Times to see at what frequency the letters of the alphabet appeared. This determined how many of each letter should be available as game pieces. He also attached numeric values to each letter that imputed the degree of difficulty in using a given letter. The total number of letter tiles to a set is one hundred so four players would use twenty-five tiles each. This letter distribution stands the test of time, as it remains the same to this day in Scrabble®. In tribute to Mr. Butt's findings, Word-sportTM maintains the same letter tile distribution using the same 98 letter tiles with two blanks.

Timing is everything

Since timing is everything in Word-sport^TM, our large print, easy to read, easy to handle letter tiles have no numeric values attached to them. This speeds up the game considerably. Players don't wait their turn to make their play because it's always their turn. There is also no game board. The entire table now becomes the game board as players form their own words in front of themselves. We use a one-minute countdown times, which speeds up the conclusion of the game after the winner is determined. For tournament play, one can use the unique battery operated, count-up, count-down "gaming clock" (purchased separately), which also registers the winning time along with second and third place finish times.

Tile distribution

You will notice a dot on some (fifty) of the word tiles. This signifies a half-set tile distribution. If you want to play with two players and keep the distribution at twenty-five tiles per player, it is easy to extract a half set of letter tiles by just removing the letter tiles, which have the dots. If you want to play six to eight players, you will have to include (purchased separately) another set of tiles. This second set not only has the dot for half-set distribution, it also has the Roman numeral II (signifies second set). This way, when you mix two sets of one hundred tiles (for eight players) you can easily separate the two sets when finished. If you have six players, just extract a half-set from the second set (the tiles with the II .) and mix them with the entire first set. You then have one hundred fifty tiles for six players (twenty-five tiles per player). Again, it is easy to restore your sets by using the notations on the tiles. Click here to read the story on how these unique letter tiles were developed.

Full set distribution (100 total)	Half-set distribution (50 total)
12   E	6   E
9   A, I	5   A
8   O	4   I, O
6   N, R, T	3   N, R, T
4   D, S, L, U	2   D, L, S, U, G
3   G	1   B, C, F, H, M, P, V, W, Y, +1 Blank
2   B, C, F, H, M,      P, V, W, Y, +2 Blanks	1   J, K
1   J, K, Q, X, Z	No   Q, X, Z