1940s · board games
Scrabble
A grid of colored bonus squares, wooden letter tiles, and the eternal argument over whether 'QI' is a real word. Every family had a dictionary next to the board.
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Image: Wikimedia Commons
◆ Did you have this?
👍 I had this💔 I wanted this- Era
- 40s
- Released
- 1948
- Category
- board games
Before you buy
- For an original edition, compare the model name, packaging, and release details with the seller’s photos.
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From the archive
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The pitch
The greatest word game in the world! Build crosswords, score big, and outsmart your friends. Scrabble — the game of champions.
Why people remember it
- The wooden tiles with their satisfying click on the board.
- Arguing over whether a word was real and reaching for the dictionary.
- The triple word score that turned a losing game into a win.
Did you know?
- Butts determined letter frequencies by analyzing the front page of the New York Times.
- The game was a flop until Macy's chairman discovered it on vacation and started stocking it in 1952.
- The highest possible Scrabble score for a single play is 1,778 points for the word OXYPHENBUTAZONE.
How people search for it
“word game with tiles”, “letter tiles board game”, “spelling game with double word score”
Questions people ask
- Who invented Scrabble?
- Alfred Butts, an unemployed architect, invented it during the Great Depression. He originally called it Lexiko and then Criss-Cross Words before settling on Scrabble in 1948.
- How many Scrabble sets have been sold?
- Over 150 million sets have been sold worldwide in 29 languages, making it one of the best-selling board games of all time.
