While unemployed during the depression, architect Alfred Mosher Butts created a board game in 1930 that utilized chance and skill. He called Lexiko.
Eight years later Butts came up with Criss Cross Words, a variation on Lexiko. The new game added the 15×15 gameboard and the crossword-style game play.
The first few sets Butts made he sold to family and friends but he made no money out of it.
The game went unnoticed until 1948 when James Brunot, from Connecticut, who was an entrepreneur and passionate games player, saw commercial possibilities. He bought the rights to the game, made some small changes to the rules and gave Butts a royalty on every set sold.
Brunot also changed its name to "Scrabble," a real word meaning "to grope frantically."
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