How the world got Scrabble

The first version of Scrabble wasn't called Scrabble. It was called 'Lexiko'. The name Lexiko was inspired by the Greek word Lexicos which means 'words'. Lexiko was somewhat similar to Scrabble although Lexiko was played without a board.

Lexiko was refined by its inventor, (a man by the name of Alfred Mosher Butts), and a board was added. Alfred was obviously thinking about crossword puzzles at this stage because he called this new version 'Criss-Cross Words'.

(As we're writing about Scrabble, we have tried to find a decent anagram of 'Alfred Mosher Butts'. It seemed appropriate. The best we could come up with was "Loser bashed Mr. Tuft". A free game from this site to anyone who can help us out and beat that).

Anyway, Alfred Butts failed to hit the big time with "Criss-Cross Words" but some years later a Criss-Cross Words player tweaked the game and renamed it Scrabble. He made a few sets and by great good fortune, the boss of a chain of stores played Scrabble on holiday. And loved it. And placed a big order. And the rest as they say, is history.......