Alfred Mosher Butts

Alfred Mosher Butts was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, on April 13, 1899,{{cite web |url=https://www.fold3.com/image/698694579 |title=Draft Registration Card |date=February 1942 |publisher=Selective Service System |via=fold3.com |url-access=subscription |accessdate=October 29, 2023}} to Allison Butts and Arrie Elizabeth Mosher. His father was a lawyer, and his mother a high school teacher. Alfred attended Poughkeepsie High School and graduated in 1917. He then graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in architecture in 1924.

He was also an amateur artist, and six of his drawings were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.{{cite news|url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE4DB173DF934A35757C0A965958260|title= Alfred M. Butts, 93, Is Dead; Inventor of SCRABBLE|access-date=2009-01-03|work=The New York Times|date=April 7, 1993|first=Bruce|last=Lambert}}

Butts and his wife, Nina, who died circa 1979, were married for 54 years; they had no children. He died on April 4, 1993, nine days before his 94th birthday.{{cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-delaware-gazette-scrabble-inventor-a/134310629/ |title=Scrabble inventor Alfred Butts dies in New York at 93 |agency=AP |newspaper=The Delaware Gazette |location=Delaware, Ohio |page=18 |date=April 7, 1993 |accessdate=October 29, 2023 |via=newspapers.com}}

In the early 1930s, after working as an architect but now unemployed, Butts set out to design a board game. He studied existing games and found that games fell into three categories: number games, such as dice and bingo; move games, such as chess and checkers; and word games, such as anagrams. Butts was a resident of Jackson Heights, New York, and the game of Scrabble was invented there.Kershaw, Sarah. [https://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/01/nyregion/neighborhood-report-jackson-heights-rewriting-the-story-of-scrabble.html "NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: JACKSON HEIGHTS;Rewriting The Story Of Scrabble"], The New York Times, October 1, 1995; retrieved May 28, 2009. To memorialize his importance to the invention of the game, a street sign at 35th Avenue and 81st Street in Jackson Heights is stylized using letters with their values in Scrabble as a subscript.{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/16/nyregion/sign-in-queens-marking-birthplace-of-scrabble-is-coming-back.html?_r=0|title=For a Bereft Street Corner in Queens, a Red-Letter Day|work=The New York Times|date=July 15, 2011|access-date=November 23, 2014|author=Ember, Sydney}}{{cite web|url=http://www.qgazette.com/news/2011-10-26/Front_Page/Historic_Scrabble_Sign_Makes_Triumphant_Return_To_.html|title=Historic Scrabble Sign Makes Triumphant Return To Jackson Heights|publisher=Queens Gazette|date=October 26, 1945|access-date=November 23, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151006182141/http://www.qgazette.com/news/2011-10-26/Front_Page/Historic_Scrabble_Sign_Makes_Triumphant_Return_To_.html|archive-date=October 6, 2015|url-status=dead}}{{Cite web |date=2011-07-21 |title=New 'Scrabble' street sign will go up in Queens to commemorate birthplace of board game |url=https://www.nydailynews.com/2011/07/21/new-scrabble-street-sign-will-go-up-in-queens-to-commemorate-birthplace-of-board-game/ |access-date=2024-11-10 |website=New York Daily News |language=en-US}}

Butts decided to create a game that utilized both chance and skill by combining elements of anagrams and crossword puzzles, a popular pastime of the 1920s. Players draw seven lettered tiles from a pool and then attempt to form words from their letters. A key to the game was Butts's analysis of the English language. Butts studied the front page of The New York Times to calculate how frequently each letter of the alphabet was used. He then used each letter's frequency to determine how many of each letter he would include in the game. He included only four "S" tiles so that the ability to make words plural would not make the game too easy.{{cite web|url=https://scrabble.hasbro.com/en-us/history|title=Discover the history behind one of the World's Favorite word games!|last1=Hasbro|website=scrabble.hasbro.com/en-us/history|publisher=Hasbro}}

Butts initially called the game Lexiko, but later changed the name to Criss Cross Words after considering It, and began to seek a buyer. The game makers he originally contacted rejected the idea, but Butts was tenacious. Eventually, he sold the rights to entrepreneur and game lover James Brunot, who made a few minor adjustments to the design and renamed the game Scrabble.

In 1948, the game was trademarked, and Brunot and his wife converted an abandoned schoolhouse in Dodgingtown, Connecticut, into a Scrabble factory. In 1949, the Brunots made 2,400 sets and lost $450 {{USDCY|450|1949}}. But the game was steadily gaining popularity, helped by orders from Macy's department store. By 1952, the Brunots could no longer keep up with demand and asked licensed game maker Selchow and Righter to market and distribute the game. As of 2009, over 150 million sets had been sold worldwide, with between one and two million sets sold each year in North America alone.{{Cite web |url=http://www.scrabble-assoc.com/info/history.html |title=History of SCRABBLE |access-date=2007-01-03 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100316172646/http://www.scrabble-assoc.com/info/history.html |archive-date=2010-03-16 |url-status=dead }}{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/jun/28/healthandwellbeing.familyandrelationships|title=Spell bound|access-date=2009-01-02|work=The Guardian|date=2008-06-28|location=London, UK}}

In his 80s, Butts invented another game, titled simply {{sic|Alfreds}} Other Game,{{cite web |title=Alfreds Other Game |url=https://www.boardgameatlas.com/search/game/z2vmA9s2Gh/alfreds-other-game |website=Board Game Atlas |access-date=4 January 2020}} released in 1985 by Selchow and Righter.{{cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/bennington-banner-killer-dolls-for-chr/134308980/ |title='Killer dolls' for Christmas '85 |agency=UPI |newspaper=Bennington Banner |location=Bennington, Vermont |page=5 |date=February 12, 1985 |accessdate=October 29, 2023 |via=newspapers.com}} Also a tile-based game, it includes 144 letter tiles and four playing boards.{{cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-daily-times-inventor-contd/134310129/ |title=Inventor (cont'd) |first=Harcourt |last=Tynes |newspaper=The Daily Times |location=Mamaroneck, New York |page=E-2 |date=July 28, 1985 |accessdate=October 29, 2023 |via=newspapers.com}} Players receive 36 letters from which they try to make as many word combinations as possible. Butts called it "simultaneous solitaire".{{cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-daily-item-86-year-old-inventor-of/134309532/ |title=86-year-old inventor of 'Scrabble' markets 'Alfred's Other Game' |agency=Ottaway News Service |newspaper=The Daily Item |location=Sunbury, Pennsylvania |page=12 |date=August 22, 1985 |accessdate=October 29, 2023 |via=newspapers.com}} It never achieved the commercial success of Scrabble.{{cite web |title=Scrabble: 60 facts for its 60th birthday |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3776732/Scrabble-60-facts-for-its-60th-birthday.html |website=The Daily Telegraph |date=December 15, 2008 |access-date=4 January 2020}} {{asof|2023|10}}, the game has a rating of 5.5 out of 10 on the BoardGameGeek website.{{cite web |url=https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3509/alfreds-other-game |title=

Alfreds Other Game |website=BoardGameGeek |accessdate=October 29, 2023}}

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• [https://web.archive.org/web/20041205211338/http://scrabble-assoc.com/captions/amb.html Picture of Alfred Mosher Butts]

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Category:1899 births

Category:1993 deaths

Category:People from Poughkeepsie, New York

Category:People from Jackson Heights, Queens

Category:University of Pennsylvania alumni

Category:Architects from New York City

Category:20th-century American architects

Category:American board game designers

Category:Scrabble