There’s a reason National Scrabble Day is observed on April 13th, and being that over 150 million copies of Scrabble have been sold around the world it is well deserving of the celebration.
Scrabble’s inventor, Alfred Mosher Butts was born on April 13, 1899. He first began making the game boards himself at home because nobody wanted to invest money to produce it. It was first known as Lexico, then became Criss-Cross Words, and eventually Scrabble.
Here are some little known facts about the game:
In Great Britain, 53% of all homes own a copy of Scrabble, and in the United States, about 33% of all homes own a set.
Scrabble is ranked as the second-best board game in U.S. History, second only to Monopoly.
Each hour, at least 30,000 Scrabble games are started.
When players use all seven of their Scrabble tiles to make a word, it’s called a bingo.