00:00:02.836 --> 00:00:05.405
(bright music)

00:00:13.880 --> 00:00:16.449
(bright music)

00:00:17.283 --> 00:00:19.052
- Word games go back to the Ancient Greeks

00:00:19.052 --> 00:00:20.253
and before.

00:00:20.253 --> 00:00:22.822
Scrabble is just the
most recent manifestation

00:00:22.822 --> 00:00:25.291
of the power of language

00:00:25.291 --> 00:00:27.427
and the desire of human beings

00:00:27.427 --> 00:00:29.863
to take language and fiddle with it.

00:00:29.863 --> 00:00:33.633
That instant rush of trying
to solve a linguistic riddle

00:00:33.633 --> 00:00:36.036
is what makes the game so powerful.

00:00:36.036 --> 00:00:37.170
- You can have an understanding

00:00:37.170 --> 00:00:39.005
about why Scrabble is so popular.

00:00:39.005 --> 00:00:41.574
It's constantly giving you brain food.

00:00:41.574 --> 00:00:44.944
- How could anyone make a word
out of these lousy letters?

00:00:44.944 --> 00:00:48.615
Oh, wait, here is a good one, do!

00:00:48.615 --> 00:00:50.750
- Spelling and math,

00:00:50.750 --> 00:00:52.685
the letters have a value.

00:00:52.685 --> 00:00:56.823
The board makes the value
of the letters and the word.

00:00:56.823 --> 00:00:58.691
So you have those two components.

00:00:58.691 --> 00:01:00.093
And it is just a great game.

00:01:01.061 --> 00:01:02.495
- [Josh] We're all really happy

00:01:02.495 --> 00:01:06.099
that Alfred Butts brought
this game into creation.

00:01:06.099 --> 00:01:07.667
- [Stefan] He wanted the
game to be democratic.

00:01:07.667 --> 00:01:09.335
He wanted everybody to be able to play it.

00:01:09.335 --> 00:01:11.504
He didn't want it to be an elitist game;

00:01:11.504 --> 00:01:13.339
he wanted it to be a family game.

00:01:13.339 --> 00:01:16.142
- It seems to have some
kind of an uncanny magnetism

00:01:16.142 --> 00:01:18.244
for people from all over the world.

00:01:18.244 --> 00:01:19.946
(upbeat music)

00:01:19.946 --> 00:01:21.181
- [Audience] "Scrabble."

00:01:21.181 --> 00:01:22.715
- Alfred was never very boastful

00:01:22.715 --> 00:01:24.784
about having invented "Scrabble,"

00:01:24.784 --> 00:01:27.320
but I know that he was very proud of it.

00:01:27.320 --> 00:01:28.621
- As a young person,

00:01:28.621 --> 00:01:32.158
it really enhanced my love
and knowledge of vocabulary.

00:01:32.158 --> 00:01:33.293
And for my children,

00:01:33.293 --> 00:01:35.195
it was something that we could do together

00:01:35.195 --> 00:01:38.631
that was fun but yet
educational at the same time.

00:01:38.631 --> 00:01:41.201
- We are lovers of words

00:01:41.201 --> 00:01:43.803
and we are dedicated to playing Scrabble.

00:01:43.803 --> 00:01:47.674
It takes us away from our
problems of everyday life.

00:01:47.674 --> 00:01:48.975
We have a lot of fun.

00:01:48.975 --> 00:01:51.177
- One of the reasons I
keep playing the game

00:01:51.177 --> 00:01:52.745
is that I've met so many nice people.

00:01:52.745 --> 00:01:54.280
- It's just a really great game

00:01:54.280 --> 00:01:55.748
and I wish that more people would play it,

00:01:55.748 --> 00:01:57.350
but it's awesome.

00:01:57.350 --> 00:02:00.753
- Scrabble allowed me to take a journey

00:02:00.753 --> 00:02:03.890
and discover what it
means to have a dream.

00:02:03.890 --> 00:02:07.127
And then, it allowed me
to try to help others

00:02:07.127 --> 00:02:08.261
do the same thing.

00:02:08.261 --> 00:02:10.830
(bright music)

00:02:12.966 --> 00:02:15.535
(bright music)

00:02:21.574 --> 00:02:24.477
(train roars past)

00:02:35.922 --> 00:02:38.825
(upbeat music)

00:02:38.825 --> 00:02:42.061
- Alfred Butts was born in 1899,

00:02:42.061 --> 00:02:43.463
in Poughkeepsie, New York.

00:02:43.463 --> 00:02:45.431
He was the youngest of five boys

00:02:45.431 --> 00:02:47.400
in the family of Allison Butts,

00:02:47.400 --> 00:02:49.169
who was a prominent local attorney.

00:02:49.169 --> 00:02:52.772
Our family actually had
come from Stanfordville,

00:02:52.772 --> 00:02:54.908
a rural community outside of Poughkeepsie.

00:02:54.908 --> 00:02:57.677
The family home out there
which, in the family,

00:02:57.677 --> 00:02:59.679
was always referred to as the Homestead,

00:02:59.679 --> 00:03:04.684
was built in 1811 by our
ancestor, Daniel Butts.

00:03:05.251 --> 00:03:08.855
Alfred grew up at 131 Academy
Street, in Poughkeepsie.

00:03:08.855 --> 00:03:12.392
And this a very grand
Victorian style house

00:03:12.392 --> 00:03:14.194
that his father had built.

00:03:14.194 --> 00:03:16.596
(bright music)

00:03:16.596 --> 00:03:18.731
- Poughkeepsie is small
city on the Hudson River.

00:03:18.731 --> 00:03:21.601
It's located about 70 miles
north of New York City.

00:03:21.601 --> 00:03:23.403
Poughkeepsie was like many small cities

00:03:23.403 --> 00:03:24.404
during the Gilded age,

00:03:24.404 --> 00:03:27.207
it was experiencing incredible growth

00:03:27.207 --> 00:03:29.709
in industry and technology

00:03:29.709 --> 00:03:32.212
with huge wealth being created

00:03:32.212 --> 00:03:35.682
and lots of philanthropists
that were really changing

00:03:35.682 --> 00:03:38.151
the character of the city at the time.

00:03:38.151 --> 00:03:40.753
- [Bob] As a child, he and his brothers

00:03:40.753 --> 00:03:43.623
used to love to play
various kinds of games

00:03:43.623 --> 00:03:47.460
and among them were word
games such as Anagrams.

00:03:47.460 --> 00:03:50.863
Anagrams was probably the
main word game at the time.

00:03:50.863 --> 00:03:53.533
He went through the public
schools in Poughkeepsie.

00:03:53.533 --> 00:03:57.270
Graduated from Poughkeepsie
High School in 1917.

00:03:57.270 --> 00:04:00.206
He was in a Reserve Unit in World War I.

00:04:02.041 --> 00:04:04.077
Alfred went to Pratt University

00:04:04.077 --> 00:04:05.778
and studied Design there.

00:04:05.778 --> 00:04:07.914
Went on and studied Architecture

00:04:07.914 --> 00:04:10.550
at the University of
Pennsylvania and graduated

00:04:10.550 --> 00:04:13.586
and ultimately found
himself in New York City.

00:04:14.921 --> 00:04:17.790
- [Reporter] In the '20s,
all roads lead to New York.

00:04:17.790 --> 00:04:19.459
Rising from an island of rock,

00:04:19.459 --> 00:04:20.994
the city invites youngsters

00:04:20.994 --> 00:04:22.729
eager to test their talents,

00:04:22.729 --> 00:04:25.198
men and women seeking success.

00:04:25.198 --> 00:04:27.800
(bright music)

00:04:30.103 --> 00:04:31.070
- In New York City,

00:04:31.070 --> 00:04:33.473
Alfred started Architecture practice

00:04:33.473 --> 00:04:35.675
with Holden and Associates.

00:04:35.675 --> 00:04:39.445
On October 3rd, 1925,

00:04:39.445 --> 00:04:41.881
he married Nina Ostrander

00:04:41.881 --> 00:04:46.319
and they lived at East
68th Street in Manhattan,

00:04:46.319 --> 00:04:50.790
later moving to 55th
Street in the late 1920s

00:04:50.790 --> 00:04:52.525
up till about 1930.

00:04:55.128 --> 00:04:58.131
Nina, who was also known
as Peggy to the family,

00:04:58.131 --> 00:05:01.134
had also been a resident of Poughkeepsie

00:05:01.134 --> 00:05:04.437
and was actually quite
a bit older than Alfred.

00:05:04.437 --> 00:05:05.905
In his early career,

00:05:05.905 --> 00:05:09.442
Alfred started off designing
houses in the suburbs,

00:05:09.442 --> 00:05:12.512
very nice country homes in Westchester

00:05:12.512 --> 00:05:13.680
and Fairfield County,

00:05:13.680 --> 00:05:16.516
and also in the New
York Metropolitan Area.

00:05:16.516 --> 00:05:19.118
(bright music)

00:05:22.088 --> 00:05:24.891
- [Reporter] Somehow
it didn't last forever.

00:05:24.891 --> 00:05:27.894
The time came when the ticker
tape in the broker's office

00:05:27.894 --> 00:05:29.228
told a new story.

00:05:29.228 --> 00:05:31.964
(dramatic music)

00:05:33.066 --> 00:05:35.168
- [Bob] In the early 1930s,

00:05:35.168 --> 00:05:38.671
Alfred and his wife
moved to Jackson Heights

00:05:38.671 --> 00:05:43.042
and took up residence at 3526 79th Street

00:05:43.042 --> 00:05:46.646
and remained there until 1950 or so

00:05:46.646 --> 00:05:49.415
and then moved to 80th street.

00:05:52.051 --> 00:05:55.088
- Alfred Butts and his wife
Nina lived in Hampton Court,

00:05:55.088 --> 00:05:57.023
on the 79th Street side.

00:05:57.023 --> 00:05:58.558
Jackson Heights was developed

00:05:58.558 --> 00:06:02.362
by the Queensboro Corporation
as a planned garden suburb,

00:06:02.362 --> 00:06:05.231
beginning in 1909 when
they purchased the land.

00:06:05.231 --> 00:06:07.834
It was predominantly
upper middle class people

00:06:07.834 --> 00:06:09.836
with its golf course and tennis club,

00:06:09.836 --> 00:06:11.838
with a higher quality housing stock

00:06:11.838 --> 00:06:14.307
just four to five miles
from Midtown Manhattan.

00:06:16.175 --> 00:06:18.911
For the period of the
1920s, it was a boom time,

00:06:18.911 --> 00:06:21.681
not just in America or New York City,

00:06:21.681 --> 00:06:22.782
but certainly here.

00:06:22.782 --> 00:06:25.485
And they started building stereotypical

00:06:25.485 --> 00:06:28.254
four or five story walk-ups
in the neighborhood

00:06:28.254 --> 00:06:29.956
and then built out the community.

00:06:29.956 --> 00:06:31.791
And, like most other developers,

00:06:31.791 --> 00:06:35.428
was only stopped by the
Depression in the early 1930s.

00:06:37.997 --> 00:06:40.333
- He was pretty busy at
the architecture firm

00:06:40.333 --> 00:06:41.701
that he was with.

00:06:41.701 --> 00:06:46.038
But then, when the Depression
hit, the building stopped

00:06:46.038 --> 00:06:49.008
and as a consequence, the
architecture work stopped

00:06:49.008 --> 00:06:52.011
and he was essentially thrown out of work.

00:06:52.011 --> 00:06:54.747
- [Reporter] Jobs, savings
and homes were wiped out.

00:06:54.747 --> 00:06:56.282
The Great Depression was here.

00:06:58.284 --> 00:07:01.621
- In the early 1930s, as a
young man in New York City,

00:07:01.621 --> 00:07:04.424
essentially laid off from
his architecture practice

00:07:04.424 --> 00:07:05.725
due to the Depression,

00:07:05.725 --> 00:07:08.261
he wanted to figure out some way

00:07:08.261 --> 00:07:09.929
that he might make some money.

00:07:09.929 --> 00:07:13.032
So he tried various other opportunities

00:07:13.032 --> 00:07:14.333
that he thought might be good.

00:07:14.333 --> 00:07:17.403
He thought he might take a
chance at becoming an artist.

00:07:17.403 --> 00:07:21.441
And so, he started doing
watercolor paintings

00:07:21.441 --> 00:07:23.910
and many of his paintings were exhibited

00:07:23.910 --> 00:07:25.912
in various shows at the time.

00:07:25.912 --> 00:07:28.681
He also made a series of etchings that,

00:07:28.681 --> 00:07:32.418
showed various buildings and
street scenes in New York City.

00:07:32.418 --> 00:07:35.488
And also he developed a process

00:07:35.488 --> 00:07:38.324
to make what he called
his Van Dyke prints,

00:07:38.324 --> 00:07:40.493
which were a series of prints

00:07:40.493 --> 00:07:43.763
primarily of New York street
scenes that might feature

00:07:43.763 --> 00:07:46.232
an architectural building
in the background.

00:07:46.232 --> 00:07:49.535
He had a series of these, maybe 10 or 15,

00:07:49.535 --> 00:07:53.039
and six of them are in
the permanent collection

00:07:53.039 --> 00:07:56.008
at the Metropolitan
Museum in New York City.

00:07:56.008 --> 00:07:58.411
However, he may have sold a few of them,

00:07:58.411 --> 00:08:01.848
but, he was never a commercial
success as an artist.

00:08:01.848 --> 00:08:04.984
So, just looking around to figure out

00:08:04.984 --> 00:08:07.186
some other way that he
might be successful,

00:08:07.186 --> 00:08:08.688
one thing that he thought of

00:08:08.688 --> 00:08:12.558
was that Monopoly had become
a great craze at the time

00:08:12.558 --> 00:08:15.495
and the inventor of Monopoly
had made a lot of money.

00:08:15.495 --> 00:08:18.231
So he thought, well, maybe
I could create a game.

00:08:20.967 --> 00:08:23.569
(bright music)

00:08:33.346 --> 00:08:35.081
- Scrabble was born

00:08:35.081 --> 00:08:37.783
at this fragile moment
in American history,

00:08:37.783 --> 00:08:39.352
during the Depression.

00:08:39.352 --> 00:08:41.354
The story of its creation

00:08:41.354 --> 00:08:44.490
is a quintessentially American story,

00:08:44.490 --> 00:08:46.626
a guy, down on his luck

00:08:46.626 --> 00:08:48.794
tries to figure out something to do

00:08:48.794 --> 00:08:51.130
that he thinks might
be appealing to people.

00:08:51.130 --> 00:08:54.200
- Well, it all started over 50 years ago

00:08:54.200 --> 00:08:55.835
because I lost my job.

00:08:55.835 --> 00:08:57.270
I was an architect working

00:08:57.270 --> 00:08:59.705
in an architecture firm in New York City

00:08:59.705 --> 00:09:01.507
and when I got out of work,

00:09:01.507 --> 00:09:03.843
I thought I'd try to invent a game.

00:09:03.843 --> 00:09:07.547
- As a child, he loved to
play games with his brothers.

00:09:07.547 --> 00:09:10.816
Being a very studious
academic person that he was,

00:09:10.816 --> 00:09:13.352
he decided first to make a study of games

00:09:13.352 --> 00:09:16.322
and find out what kind
of games were popular

00:09:16.322 --> 00:09:18.357
and where there might be an opportunity

00:09:18.357 --> 00:09:20.726
to create something new and different

00:09:20.726 --> 00:09:22.862
that might be successful in the market.

00:09:22.862 --> 00:09:25.932
- He wrote a little paper about
the history of board games.

00:09:25.932 --> 00:09:27.700
- It seemed to be there
were three different types.

00:09:27.700 --> 00:09:30.303
There was moving men on a
board like Checkers and Chess,

00:09:30.303 --> 00:09:33.606
there was playing with numbers,
which is playing cards,

00:09:33.606 --> 00:09:36.442
there was also one playing with words.

00:09:36.442 --> 00:09:37.577
- Alfred's conclusion was,

00:09:37.577 --> 00:09:40.746
they were plenty of good
games that had men on a board

00:09:40.746 --> 00:09:42.648
and that used dice or cards,

00:09:42.648 --> 00:09:44.250
but there weren't any good letter games.

00:09:44.250 --> 00:09:46.085
- Strange to say today,

00:09:46.085 --> 00:09:47.920
you look back and you'll
find, in those days,

00:09:47.920 --> 00:09:50.890
there was only one word
game and that was Anagrams.

00:09:50.890 --> 00:09:52.391
And, well, here's my chance,

00:09:52.391 --> 00:09:55.962
I'll see if I can improve on Anagrams.

00:09:55.962 --> 00:09:58.397
- Because I told you I
won't be responsible.

00:09:58.397 --> 00:09:59.432
That's a long one.

00:10:01.400 --> 00:10:03.903
I say there's no such word, find the R.

00:10:03.903 --> 00:10:05.204
I don't wanna go up there in the morning,

00:10:05.204 --> 00:10:08.374
certainly, it'll be
nasty and cold and wet.

00:10:08.374 --> 00:10:10.142
- I'm not picky,
- Oh, well, if you got to go,

00:10:10.142 --> 00:10:10.943
Tom will understand.

00:10:10.943 --> 00:10:14.347
Now if I had an E-R, I
could make that murderer.

00:10:15.481 --> 00:10:18.751
- So, he set about to
create a better word game.

00:10:18.751 --> 00:10:21.120
He didn't happen on Scrabble immediately.

00:10:21.120 --> 00:10:23.723
His first game was called Lexiko.

00:10:23.723 --> 00:10:24.991
It did not have a board,

00:10:24.991 --> 00:10:26.959
it was very similar to Anagrams.

00:10:26.959 --> 00:10:30.363
- The object of the game was
to make eight-letter words

00:10:30.363 --> 00:10:32.565
and it was played sort of like Gin Rummy,

00:10:32.565 --> 00:10:34.867
where you would draw letter tiles

00:10:34.867 --> 00:10:36.502
and then play them down

00:10:36.502 --> 00:10:39.472
when you would get a word
of four letters, say,

00:10:39.472 --> 00:10:41.974
and then the word could be added onto

00:10:41.974 --> 00:10:44.276
and was played in that manner.

00:10:44.276 --> 00:10:46.345
It did resemble Scrabble

00:10:46.345 --> 00:10:48.714
in that it had letter tiles

00:10:48.714 --> 00:10:51.917
and it had racks that you
would put the tiles in.

00:10:51.917 --> 00:10:53.519
But it didn't have a playing board.

00:10:53.519 --> 00:10:58.491
This came into production
in about 1932 or 1933.

00:11:01.427 --> 00:11:03.796
- [Stefan] So, he manufactured
Lexiko in his apartment.

00:11:03.796 --> 00:11:06.899
He used baseboard molding for the racks.

00:11:06.899 --> 00:11:10.369
He made the tiles out of balsa wood.

00:11:10.369 --> 00:11:14.040
He engraved the letters
on them with India ink.

00:11:14.040 --> 00:11:17.977
- Developing games is not an easy process

00:11:17.977 --> 00:11:21.514
and Alfred went though many variations

00:11:21.514 --> 00:11:24.684
and iterations to try to develop a game.

00:11:24.684 --> 00:11:26.686
Living in Jackson Heights at the time,

00:11:26.686 --> 00:11:28.988
he would often have neighbors over

00:11:28.988 --> 00:11:32.358
and they would play one
of his prototype games.

00:11:32.358 --> 00:11:33.793
And people would comment,

00:11:33.793 --> 00:11:35.428
maybe this element of the game

00:11:35.428 --> 00:11:37.797
doesn't play as well as some other element

00:11:37.797 --> 00:11:39.699
and maybe this should be changed.

00:11:39.699 --> 00:11:43.969
And so, over the course of,
probably a number of months,

00:11:43.969 --> 00:11:46.539
the game would evolve and get perfected.

00:11:46.539 --> 00:11:48.607
- And he tried to sell it.

00:11:48.607 --> 00:11:50.342
He sent it off to games companies

00:11:50.342 --> 00:11:52.745
and he was rejected by
everybody, Milton Bradley,

00:11:52.745 --> 00:11:54.213
every games company that he sent it to

00:11:54.213 --> 00:11:55.981
told him that there was
no market for this game.

00:11:55.981 --> 00:11:57.483
So, he sold it on his own,

00:11:57.483 --> 00:11:59.118
a few copies here and a few copies there,

00:11:59.118 --> 00:12:01.320
he took out advertisements in magazines

00:12:01.320 --> 00:12:04.056
and would get orders and fulfill them.

00:12:04.056 --> 00:12:06.158
But even though Lexiko was a failure

00:12:06.158 --> 00:12:08.961
as a marketing proposition,
he doesn't give up.

00:12:08.961 --> 00:12:11.197
He still recognizes that
there is a market for a game.

00:12:11.197 --> 00:12:14.633
He wants to create something,
he wants to make a game.

00:12:14.633 --> 00:12:16.736
- I found some correspondence

00:12:16.736 --> 00:12:18.704
where someone wrote to Alfred

00:12:18.704 --> 00:12:20.606
to purchase a set of Lexiko

00:12:20.606 --> 00:12:22.408
and Alfred wrote him back, saying,

00:12:22.408 --> 00:12:24.610
"I'm not producing Lexiko anymore,

00:12:24.610 --> 00:12:27.613
I've been working on a
new variation of the game,

00:12:27.613 --> 00:12:29.048
which I think is much better

00:12:29.048 --> 00:12:32.051
and hope to have it ready for production

00:12:32.051 --> 00:12:33.686
in a few months."

00:12:33.686 --> 00:12:35.254
- He must have had an aha moment

00:12:35.254 --> 00:12:38.491
where he realized that there
was a problem with Lexiko.

00:12:38.491 --> 00:12:40.493
The flaw that Butts identified

00:12:40.493 --> 00:12:43.129
was that Lexiko needed a board.

00:12:43.129 --> 00:12:45.331
It needed to be a more dynamic game.

00:12:45.331 --> 00:12:49.769
It needed to have that one-on-one
interaction over a board

00:12:49.769 --> 00:12:52.304
that would enhance the competitive aspect.

00:12:52.304 --> 00:12:55.441
- Suddenly Crossword Puzzles came in style

00:12:55.441 --> 00:12:58.410
and I got to doing Crossword
Puzzles and I said,

00:12:58.410 --> 00:13:01.080
"Well, how about playing this on a board?

00:13:01.080 --> 00:13:04.416
How about putting my words on a board

00:13:04.416 --> 00:13:06.185
like Crossword Puzzles?"

00:13:06.185 --> 00:13:08.888
- And so, he set about,
in similar fashion,

00:13:08.888 --> 00:13:10.456
to create a new game.

00:13:12.057 --> 00:13:13.592
He didn't really have a
name for it initially,

00:13:13.592 --> 00:13:14.660
he couldn't come up with a name.

00:13:14.660 --> 00:13:16.395
He called it "It" for a while

00:13:16.395 --> 00:13:18.664
and he finally settled
on "Criss Cross Words."

00:13:18.664 --> 00:13:20.299
- And you see, this is what I had,

00:13:20.299 --> 00:13:23.769
Criss Cross Words, using the blueprints,

00:13:23.769 --> 00:13:26.105
they didn't have copying
machines in those days,

00:13:26.105 --> 00:13:28.007
so I being an architect,

00:13:28.007 --> 00:13:30.242
I can make drawings and get blueprints.

00:13:30.242 --> 00:13:32.912
And I'd mount the blueprint
on a Checker board.

00:13:32.912 --> 00:13:36.849
I can mount the blueprints
of the letters on plywood,

00:13:36.849 --> 00:13:38.417
cut up the plywood for the letters.

00:13:38.417 --> 00:13:40.753
And I had to buy boxes, but that was it.

00:13:41.687 --> 00:13:44.490
- It resembles a Scrabble,
but it's not Scrabble.

00:13:44.490 --> 00:13:47.493
And he tinkered meticulously again.

00:13:47.493 --> 00:13:49.929
He tinkered with his board design.

00:13:49.929 --> 00:13:52.398
Scrabble is 15 by 15.

00:13:52.398 --> 00:13:54.600
He did different versions of that,

00:13:54.600 --> 00:13:56.502
12 by 12, 11 by 11.

00:13:56.502 --> 00:13:58.804
He decided that you needed bonus squares

00:13:58.804 --> 00:14:01.140
to double or triple the
value of letters and words.

00:14:01.140 --> 00:14:02.842
He moved those all around the board.

00:14:02.842 --> 00:14:05.911
There are these lovely
prototypes that he developed

00:14:05.911 --> 00:14:08.948
of the board designs that
he did on architect's linen.

00:14:08.948 --> 00:14:11.851
And you can see the
migration of the squares

00:14:11.851 --> 00:14:12.685
around the board

00:14:12.685 --> 00:14:14.420
and the way the game was changing.

00:14:14.420 --> 00:14:16.355
He went through various trials

00:14:16.355 --> 00:14:18.424
in terms of how the board would be set up.

00:14:18.424 --> 00:14:21.994
One trial, for example, had
the square with the star,

00:14:21.994 --> 00:14:24.296
where you lay down your first word

00:14:24.296 --> 00:14:25.831
in the upper left-hand corner

00:14:25.831 --> 00:14:28.567
like where most people would
start a crossword puzzle.

00:14:28.567 --> 00:14:31.337
And he tried it at various
other spots on the board.

00:14:31.337 --> 00:14:33.806
He tried various layouts

00:14:33.806 --> 00:14:36.775
for where the Premium
Word Square should be,

00:14:36.775 --> 00:14:39.478
eventually coming up with a layout

00:14:39.478 --> 00:14:41.714
that is very similar to the layout

00:14:41.714 --> 00:14:43.148
of the current Scrabble board.

00:14:43.148 --> 00:14:45.017
Alfred had a big decision to make,

00:14:45.017 --> 00:14:48.120
which is, how many of each
letter should you include

00:14:48.120 --> 00:14:49.989
to make the game equitable,

00:14:49.989 --> 00:14:51.957
to make it playable, to make it fun?

00:14:51.957 --> 00:14:54.393
And he didn't do this haphazardly.

00:14:54.393 --> 00:14:56.762
He was very mathematical about it.

00:14:56.762 --> 00:14:58.931
He set about trying to determine

00:14:58.931 --> 00:15:02.201
what the proper ratio of letters

00:15:02.201 --> 00:15:04.270
in English-language usage was.

00:15:04.270 --> 00:15:05.571
I think to explain this,

00:15:05.571 --> 00:15:09.241
I go back to Edgar Allen Poe's tales.

00:15:09.241 --> 00:15:11.877
One of the stories being "The Gold Bug,"

00:15:11.877 --> 00:15:16.081
where the main character
finds a coded message,

00:15:16.081 --> 00:15:19.485
which is the directions to
Captain Kidd's treasure.

00:15:19.485 --> 00:15:22.721
But the message is in code
with a bunch of symbols

00:15:22.721 --> 00:15:25.291
and it's decoded based on the frequency

00:15:25.291 --> 00:15:27.159
of the symbols that appear.

00:15:27.159 --> 00:15:29.528
Obviously, E is the most frequent letter

00:15:29.528 --> 00:15:31.263
in the English language

00:15:31.263 --> 00:15:34.900
and if you have a set of
three symbols that ends in E,

00:15:34.900 --> 00:15:36.735
it might be the word the,

00:15:36.735 --> 00:15:39.672
then you can find the
symbols for the T and the H.

00:15:39.672 --> 00:15:42.841
And by counting the number of symbols,

00:15:42.841 --> 00:15:44.910
the detective came up with,

00:15:44.910 --> 00:15:47.112
in this message, the key to the code.

00:15:47.112 --> 00:15:51.884
So, Alfred would take a page
from "The New York Times"

00:15:51.884 --> 00:15:53.352
or from "The Herald Tribune,"

00:15:53.352 --> 00:15:55.254
or "The Saturday Evening Post,"

00:15:55.254 --> 00:15:57.623
and underline all the eight-letter words,

00:15:57.623 --> 00:16:00.693
and then meticulously go
through the list of words,

00:16:00.693 --> 00:16:04.096
counting how many times
the letter E appeared,

00:16:04.096 --> 00:16:06.198
how many times the letter C appeared,

00:16:06.198 --> 00:16:09.702
how many Z's there are
and so on and so forth.

00:16:09.702 --> 00:16:12.104
(bright music)

00:16:12.104 --> 00:16:13.973
- He created these giant spreadsheets

00:16:13.973 --> 00:16:15.841
with the letters on the Y-axis

00:16:15.841 --> 00:16:18.711
and the length of words on the X-axis

00:16:18.711 --> 00:16:20.012
and he just tallied them.

00:16:21.113 --> 00:16:25.784
This must have taken hours,
dozens and dozens of hours.

00:16:25.784 --> 00:16:29.221
He would put check marks
in each box for each letter

00:16:29.221 --> 00:16:32.191
to try to determine what the right ratio

00:16:32.191 --> 00:16:35.027
of each letter was in the language.

00:16:35.027 --> 00:16:36.662
- He did this all manually,

00:16:36.662 --> 00:16:40.566
tallying up the letter
frequency, and then from that,

00:16:40.566 --> 00:16:43.902
determining how many of
each letter there should be.

00:16:43.902 --> 00:16:45.804
- And from that frequency,

00:16:45.804 --> 00:16:47.639
I assigned a value to each letter.

00:16:47.639 --> 00:16:49.942
Q and X being very rare,

00:16:49.942 --> 00:16:52.978
was my count of ten going down to E

00:16:52.978 --> 00:16:55.581
and the other vowels scoring only one.

00:16:55.581 --> 00:16:57.783
- But as he tinkered with all of this,

00:16:57.783 --> 00:16:58.951
he needed guinea pigs,

00:16:58.951 --> 00:17:00.753
he needed people to play his game.

00:17:00.753 --> 00:17:03.188
- [Bob] In developing the variations

00:17:03.188 --> 00:17:06.692
and perfecting the game, his
wife Nina was instrumental

00:17:06.692 --> 00:17:08.994
and probably his best advisor.

00:17:08.994 --> 00:17:10.596
And also within the community,

00:17:10.596 --> 00:17:12.264
they met their neighbors often

00:17:12.264 --> 00:17:15.567
at the Community Methodist
Church in Jackson Heights.

00:17:15.567 --> 00:17:18.203
I think eventually at the church,

00:17:18.203 --> 00:17:21.106
they might have a Scrabble
night once a week.

00:17:21.106 --> 00:17:22.608
- He wanted the game to be democratic.

00:17:22.608 --> 00:17:24.309
He wanted everybody to be able to play it.

00:17:24.309 --> 00:17:26.478
He didn't want it to be an elitist game,

00:17:26.478 --> 00:17:28.080
he wanted it to be a family game

00:17:28.080 --> 00:17:31.950
because that was his
experience in playing games.

00:17:31.950 --> 00:17:34.887
He didn't want to create
some sort highfalutin,

00:17:34.887 --> 00:17:38.157
inaccessible game, he wanted
this to be a mass-market game.

00:17:38.157 --> 00:17:40.459
You can almost see inside Alfred's mind,

00:17:40.459 --> 00:17:41.927
like, how would this work?

00:17:41.927 --> 00:17:44.596
How do I create a game that maximizes

00:17:44.596 --> 00:17:45.697
both skill and luck?

00:17:45.697 --> 00:17:47.866
How do I create this good balance

00:17:47.866 --> 00:17:50.302
so that it's fun to play
and it's interesting,

00:17:50.302 --> 00:17:51.503
and it's competitive?

00:17:51.503 --> 00:17:54.206
And by the late 1930s, that was the game

00:17:54.206 --> 00:17:57.543
and it's the game that
resembles Scrabble today.

00:18:02.614 --> 00:18:05.184
(bright music)

00:18:09.988 --> 00:18:13.192
(suspenseful music)

00:18:13.192 --> 00:18:15.060
Butts does the same thing
with Criss Cross Words

00:18:15.060 --> 00:18:16.428
that he did with Lexiko.

00:18:16.428 --> 00:18:19.465
He makes it in his living
room, takes out a few ads,

00:18:19.465 --> 00:18:22.334
he responds to orders, it
doesn't take off either.

00:18:22.334 --> 00:18:23.469
And he does this for years.

00:18:23.469 --> 00:18:26.138
Through the war, he's
still tinkering with it,

00:18:26.138 --> 00:18:28.240
he's still messing around with it.

00:18:28.240 --> 00:18:29.675
- By the late '30s,

00:18:29.675 --> 00:18:32.010
the Depression was winding down

00:18:32.010 --> 00:18:34.713
and Alfred went back
to work as an architect

00:18:34.713 --> 00:18:35.881
with the Holden Firm.

00:18:35.881 --> 00:18:40.052
So he had less time to
do further invention

00:18:40.052 --> 00:18:43.555
and more importantly,
did not have the time

00:18:43.555 --> 00:18:48.127
or the expertise to produce
and market the game.

00:18:48.127 --> 00:18:51.930
Basically, for the next ten years or so,

00:18:51.930 --> 00:18:56.568
Alfred was casting around
for someone to partner with

00:18:56.568 --> 00:18:58.837
or to license the game to,

00:18:58.837 --> 00:19:00.839
who would essentially take the game

00:19:00.839 --> 00:19:04.443
and try and make it a commercial success.

00:19:04.443 --> 00:19:06.778
In the early 1940s, for example,

00:19:06.778 --> 00:19:10.582
he was working with a man named
Chester Ives from Danbury,

00:19:10.582 --> 00:19:13.519
who made several efforts
to produce the game,

00:19:13.519 --> 00:19:15.587
but really didn't get anywhere.

00:19:15.587 --> 00:19:20.592
Finally around 1948, he made
contact with James Brunot

00:19:21.093 --> 00:19:23.428
who lived in Bethel, Connecticut.

00:19:24.463 --> 00:19:27.232
- James Brunot, a Federal
Government employee,

00:19:27.232 --> 00:19:30.102
was tired of commuting into
the city two hours each way.

00:19:30.102 --> 00:19:32.404
He wanted to start a little
business in the country.

00:19:32.404 --> 00:19:36.175
Brunot had been given a
set of Criss Cross Words

00:19:36.175 --> 00:19:39.711
by one of Alfred's guinea pigs in Queens.

00:19:39.711 --> 00:19:41.180
And he played it and he liked it,

00:19:41.180 --> 00:19:43.148
and he reached out to the creator

00:19:43.148 --> 00:19:46.218
to see if there was a way
that they might work together

00:19:46.218 --> 00:19:47.819
to market the game.

00:19:47.819 --> 00:19:49.621
Brunot initially plays down

00:19:49.621 --> 00:19:52.024
the marketing potential of the game,

00:19:52.024 --> 00:19:53.425
he tells Butts that he doesn't think

00:19:53.425 --> 00:19:54.760
it has significant potential.

00:19:54.760 --> 00:19:57.129
But at the same time, he's thinking about

00:19:57.129 --> 00:20:00.032
ways of making it a successful business.

00:20:00.032 --> 00:20:03.869
And he makes some significant
changes to Butts's design.

00:20:03.869 --> 00:20:05.938
He turns the star in
the middle of the board

00:20:05.938 --> 00:20:10.943
into a double-word score, he
gives very familiar colors

00:20:11.310 --> 00:20:13.712
where James Brunot adding
those to the design

00:20:13.712 --> 00:20:15.948
and he significantly, most significantly,

00:20:15.948 --> 00:20:17.049
comes up with the name.

00:20:17.049 --> 00:20:19.184
- They couldn't use the
name Criss Cross Words

00:20:19.184 --> 00:20:21.887
because it was too much
like Crossword Puzzles.

00:20:21.887 --> 00:20:24.656
Somebody says, "Oh,
let's call it Scrabble,

00:20:24.656 --> 00:20:26.525
like scrambling for words."

00:20:27.392 --> 00:20:28.327
- He gets a trademark,

00:20:28.327 --> 00:20:30.796
he gets a copyright on
the design of the board

00:20:30.796 --> 00:20:33.232
and he tries to take it to market.

00:20:33.232 --> 00:20:36.702
Initially, Brunot and his wife turn a barn

00:20:36.702 --> 00:20:40.639
into a manufacturing center for the game.

00:20:40.639 --> 00:20:41.940
And that was doable

00:20:41.940 --> 00:20:44.243
because they really weren't
selling very many sets.

00:20:44.243 --> 00:20:48.947
This starts in 1948, in 1949,
they sell about 2,400 sets.

00:20:48.947 --> 00:20:50.015
- I used to get royalties

00:20:50.015 --> 00:20:53.752
of I think about 4% of
the wholesale price.

00:20:53.752 --> 00:20:57.990
And I remember my first
royalties in 1949, $36.

00:20:59.491 --> 00:21:00.892
- There's not huge demand.

00:21:00.892 --> 00:21:02.961
Similarly, in 1950 and '51,

00:21:02.961 --> 00:21:04.229
not a tremendous amount of demand,

00:21:04.229 --> 00:21:06.198
though it grows, it's
into the four digits.

00:21:06.198 --> 00:21:09.368
But then, in 1952, Brunot
goes away on vacation

00:21:09.368 --> 00:21:11.503
and he comes back and suddenly,

00:21:11.503 --> 00:21:13.872
there are thousands of orders for Scrabble

00:21:13.872 --> 00:21:15.741
and he can't really
figure out what happened.

00:21:15.741 --> 00:21:18.443
And the story isn't exactly clear.

00:21:18.443 --> 00:21:19.578
As best as I can determine,

00:21:19.578 --> 00:21:21.780
the Chairman of Macy's played the game

00:21:21.780 --> 00:21:23.315
while he was on vacation

00:21:23.315 --> 00:21:27.052
and must have chewed out
someone in the Toy Department

00:21:27.052 --> 00:21:29.521
and said, "We've got to
stock this game, it's great."

00:21:29.521 --> 00:21:31.456
And Macy's does that

00:21:31.456 --> 00:21:35.360
and starts to sell hundreds
and hundreds of sets

00:21:35.360 --> 00:21:37.562
and Brunot's orders go through the roof

00:21:37.562 --> 00:21:38.730
and they can't fulfill them.

00:21:38.730 --> 00:21:40.999
They're making the board and the tiles

00:21:40.999 --> 00:21:43.235
and the racks in their barn

00:21:43.235 --> 00:21:46.338
with a few woodworkers as employees.

00:21:46.338 --> 00:21:48.473
Suddenly sales take off,

00:21:48.473 --> 00:21:50.642
Brunot's getting orders for
five hundred sets a week

00:21:50.642 --> 00:21:52.811
in the third quarter of 1952.

00:21:52.811 --> 00:21:53.645
By the end of the year,

00:21:53.645 --> 00:21:56.281
he's getting sales for 2,000 sets a week.

00:21:56.281 --> 00:21:59.851
He hires more employees
in his barn in Connecticut

00:21:59.851 --> 00:22:01.953
to try to keep up with production.

00:22:01.953 --> 00:22:03.655
But it's hard to do that

00:22:03.655 --> 00:22:05.857
because Scrabble is on the precipice

00:22:05.857 --> 00:22:08.894
of becoming a national phenomenon.

00:22:08.894 --> 00:22:11.730
(bright music)

00:22:11.730 --> 00:22:13.598
So in the Spring of 1953,

00:22:13.598 --> 00:22:15.667
Brunot realizes he has to do something.

00:22:15.667 --> 00:22:19.204
He licenses the production of
a cheap version of Scrabble

00:22:19.204 --> 00:22:20.872
to a Chicago company.

00:22:20.872 --> 00:22:23.375
But he turns over the manufacturing

00:22:23.375 --> 00:22:24.976
and marketing of the game

00:22:24.976 --> 00:22:27.212
to Selchow and Righter, a big toy company.

00:22:27.212 --> 00:22:28.814
And it's a good thing he does that

00:22:28.814 --> 00:22:31.049
because Scrabble was about to become

00:22:31.049 --> 00:22:34.119
the most successful start-up
game in American history.

00:22:35.287 --> 00:22:36.988
- [Bob] After the game started being sold

00:22:36.988 --> 00:22:41.693
at Macy's and other stores,
it skyrocketed in popularity.

00:22:41.693 --> 00:22:46.064
In 1951, 5,000 copies
of the game were sold.

00:22:46.064 --> 00:22:47.299
- By the end of 1953,

00:22:47.299 --> 00:22:52.104
they've sold close to
800,000 sets of Scrabble.

00:22:52.104 --> 00:22:56.174
And then, in 1954, they sell
almost four million sets.

00:22:56.174 --> 00:22:59.311
It is the greatest startup in the history

00:22:59.311 --> 00:23:01.346
of the American games industry.

00:23:01.346 --> 00:23:04.816
Monopoly sold more sets cumulatively,

00:23:04.816 --> 00:23:08.019
but to go from nothing to four million

00:23:08.019 --> 00:23:10.422
the way Scrabble did was just stunning.

00:23:10.422 --> 00:23:13.592
And it put it in the
same Pantheon as Monopoly

00:23:13.592 --> 00:23:16.428
in terms of cultural
penetration and sales.

00:23:16.428 --> 00:23:18.063
And not only is it a sales hit,

00:23:18.063 --> 00:23:19.998
it is a cultural phenomenon.

00:23:19.998 --> 00:23:22.467
Today, we'd say the game went viral,

00:23:22.467 --> 00:23:24.069
There are stories in Life Magazine,

00:23:24.069 --> 00:23:27.172
in "The New Yorker," in
"The Saturday Evening Post."

00:23:28.173 --> 00:23:31.109
Butts goes on "The Today
Show," which had just started.

00:23:31.109 --> 00:23:33.712
The Queen Mother pays a visit to New York

00:23:33.712 --> 00:23:36.248
and she goes shopping and
buys a set of Scrabble.

00:23:36.248 --> 00:23:38.617
Celebrities are photographed
playing the game

00:23:38.617 --> 00:23:40.252
in glossy magazines.

00:23:40.252 --> 00:23:42.721
President Eisenhower and his wife Mamie

00:23:42.721 --> 00:23:45.123
play the game at Camp David.

00:23:45.123 --> 00:23:46.892
(upbeat music)

00:23:46.892 --> 00:23:48.994
This was a great family game.

00:23:48.994 --> 00:23:52.531
This was a perfect game
to play on the holidays.

00:23:52.531 --> 00:23:55.667
This was a perfect game to
pull out on the kitchen table

00:23:55.667 --> 00:23:58.570
and play with your grandmother
or play with your children.

00:23:59.704 --> 00:24:01.807
And one of the main reasons
Scrabble was so successful

00:24:01.807 --> 00:24:04.042
was that it fit perfectly with the times.

00:24:04.042 --> 00:24:06.812
Scrabble had took off
in the post-war culture,

00:24:06.812 --> 00:24:09.347
Alfred had stumbled on the right idea.

00:24:10.248 --> 00:24:11.850
- 57.

00:24:11.850 --> 00:24:15.887
Well, I might make a little
money teaching Scrabble.

00:24:18.390 --> 00:24:20.892
- [Narrator] Never in history
has the American family

00:24:20.892 --> 00:24:22.260
known such wellbeing.

00:24:23.595 --> 00:24:25.931
(slow music)

00:24:25.931 --> 00:24:27.265
- This was the 1950s.

00:24:27.265 --> 00:24:31.236
America was thriving, there
was more disposable income,

00:24:32.537 --> 00:24:35.373
there's more leisure time,
people needed stuff to do.

00:24:35.373 --> 00:24:38.310
They could afford to play
games, it was not a luxury.

00:24:38.310 --> 00:24:41.112
And playing a game was
one thing that they did.

00:24:41.112 --> 00:24:44.583
The idea of a competition
with Russia in the Cold War

00:24:44.583 --> 00:24:48.019
and the race to outer
space, education is huge.

00:24:48.019 --> 00:24:50.922
Scrabble sort of taps
into all of these ideas.

00:24:52.491 --> 00:24:56.094
- I discovered Scrabble as a game in 1955.

00:24:56.094 --> 00:24:57.662
Somehow it caught on,

00:24:57.662 --> 00:25:00.432
at least in the Borscht Belt circuit,

00:25:00.432 --> 00:25:02.834
one of the Jewish
resorts in the Catskills.

00:25:02.834 --> 00:25:05.403
And then one summer, people
brought the game Scrabble

00:25:05.403 --> 00:25:07.672
and everybody was playing it.

00:25:07.672 --> 00:25:10.442
I was a pretty bright kid with words

00:25:10.442 --> 00:25:11.843
and I loved the game.

00:25:11.843 --> 00:25:15.013
Then we came back to New York
and we wanted to buy a set.

00:25:15.013 --> 00:25:18.316
The original set in the
maroon box was $3 then.

00:25:18.316 --> 00:25:19.551
You couldn't find it anywhere.

00:25:19.551 --> 00:25:21.052
Every place was sold out.

00:25:21.052 --> 00:25:23.555
We finally found it in
Hammacher Schlemmer,

00:25:23.555 --> 00:25:26.458
which is a very elite
store on 57th Street.

00:25:26.458 --> 00:25:28.660
We bought our Scrabble
set in Hammacher Schlemmer

00:25:28.660 --> 00:25:29.928
for the same $3.

00:25:29.928 --> 00:25:32.631
But that's the only time
we ever shopped there.

00:25:32.631 --> 00:25:36.167
- Alfred realized that hat
he had invented a good game

00:25:36.167 --> 00:25:38.970
and he really did believe in his game.

00:25:38.970 --> 00:25:41.940
But I don't think he had any idea

00:25:41.940 --> 00:25:44.109
and was totally bemused about the fact

00:25:44.109 --> 00:25:45.944
that it became so popular.

00:25:45.944 --> 00:25:49.481
It really exceeded his
wildest expectations.

00:25:49.481 --> 00:25:52.350
- I have got a good game
here, that much I thought,

00:25:52.350 --> 00:25:54.853
but I had no idea it was gonna be

00:25:54.853 --> 00:25:57.789
as successful as it has been, no.

00:25:57.789 --> 00:25:59.724
(bright music)

00:25:59.724 --> 00:26:03.662
During the time the game was
being manufactured by Brunot,

00:26:03.662 --> 00:26:06.097
Alfred was receiving royalties

00:26:06.097 --> 00:26:08.433
for the sale of sets of the game.

00:26:08.433 --> 00:26:11.202
And he didn't make a huge amount of money,

00:26:11.202 --> 00:26:13.838
but it enabled him to
live very comfortably.

00:26:13.838 --> 00:26:16.641
And one of the things
that he was able to do

00:26:16.641 --> 00:26:21.646
was to repurchase the home
that had been built in 1811

00:26:22.280 --> 00:26:27.085
by his great-great grandfather
in Stanfordville, New York.

00:26:27.085 --> 00:26:28.720
- So in the life of Scrabble,

00:26:28.720 --> 00:26:31.990
Butts did make over a
million dollars in royalties.

00:26:31.990 --> 00:26:34.292
So Alfred just wasn't a
great businessman, I think.

00:26:34.292 --> 00:26:35.660
Brunot got about twelve cents

00:26:35.660 --> 00:26:37.596
for every set of Scrabble that was sold

00:26:37.596 --> 00:26:41.199
and Alfred got two and a
half cents for every set.

00:26:41.199 --> 00:26:44.469
But it never bothered him,
he felt that it was enough.

00:26:44.469 --> 00:26:46.638
- I got royalties from Jim Brunot.

00:26:46.638 --> 00:26:50.241
I never had any direct connection
with Selchow and Righter,

00:26:50.241 --> 00:26:52.310
except through Jim Brunot.

00:26:52.310 --> 00:26:55.246
Finally, it got so big
and he had enough money,

00:26:55.246 --> 00:26:56.348
he didn't care about it.

00:26:56.348 --> 00:26:58.650
So he decided to sell the whole business

00:26:58.650 --> 00:27:00.151
to Selchow and Righter.

00:27:00.151 --> 00:27:03.421
But I got a share of the total
amount that Jim Brunot got

00:27:03.421 --> 00:27:06.424
so, I was well taken care of on the money.

00:27:06.424 --> 00:27:09.127
- At another point, he said
that Scrabble allowed him

00:27:09.127 --> 00:27:10.695
to stop worrying about income

00:27:10.695 --> 00:27:12.998
and start worrying about income tax.

00:27:12.998 --> 00:27:15.000
- While I enjoy getting the money,

00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:16.701
I get a great deal of pleasure

00:27:16.701 --> 00:27:18.303
out of all the letters I get

00:27:18.303 --> 00:27:21.473
from people just thanking
me for inventing the game.

00:27:21.473 --> 00:27:24.676
- To me, it feels like Alfred
Butts got short changed.

00:27:24.676 --> 00:27:26.378
It was plenty of money for him

00:27:26.378 --> 00:27:29.581
and it gave him a life
that he wanted to live.

00:27:29.581 --> 00:27:31.683
But we often overlook the inventors

00:27:31.683 --> 00:27:34.152
and the inventors are the
ones that get short-shrifted.

00:27:34.152 --> 00:27:36.421
And I think that is the case with Alfred.

00:27:36.421 --> 00:27:38.790
Alfred kind of disappears
from the Scrabble scene.

00:27:38.790 --> 00:27:40.392
He collects his royalty checks

00:27:40.392 --> 00:27:41.593
and he's pretty happy about it.

00:27:41.593 --> 00:27:44.295
It allows him to support
himself and his wife Nina.

00:27:44.295 --> 00:27:46.097
It allowed him to have a
comfortable retirement,

00:27:46.097 --> 00:27:48.166
where he could do things
like make jig-saw puzzles

00:27:48.166 --> 00:27:49.534
and collect more postcards

00:27:49.534 --> 00:27:51.569
and organize his high school reunions,

00:27:51.569 --> 00:27:52.837
and not have to worry about it.

00:27:52.837 --> 00:27:54.272
And that was kind of it for him,

00:27:54.272 --> 00:27:56.975
he kind of vanished
from the Scrabble scene,

00:27:56.975 --> 00:27:59.844
while the culture took it over from him

00:27:59.844 --> 00:28:03.014
and took this idea of
this game that he had,

00:28:03.014 --> 00:28:06.618
this brilliant idea, and
transformed it into something

00:28:06.618 --> 00:28:09.054
much, much different than
what he had envisioned.

00:28:13.224 --> 00:28:15.827
(bright music)

00:28:22.434 --> 00:28:25.003
(upbeat music)

00:28:26.404 --> 00:28:28.273
But while all this was happening,

00:28:28.273 --> 00:28:31.142
people realized that this was
a more sophisticated game too.

00:28:31.142 --> 00:28:33.344
And the people who did
that were games players,

00:28:33.344 --> 00:28:34.646
serious games players,

00:28:34.646 --> 00:28:36.381
chess players, people who understood

00:28:36.381 --> 00:28:38.917
that there was a mathematics, a geometry,

00:28:38.917 --> 00:28:40.985
there was strategy involved in this game.

00:28:42.520 --> 00:28:45.056
Gambling took off really
quickly with Scrabble.

00:28:45.056 --> 00:28:47.926
You could play Scrabble
and bet, a penny a point.

00:28:47.926 --> 00:28:50.628
At the end of the 1950s
and into the early 1960s,

00:28:50.628 --> 00:28:53.798
Scrabble becomes a
staple in games parlors,

00:28:53.798 --> 00:28:57.836
where Chess and Backgammon
were the typical games.

00:28:57.836 --> 00:29:00.972
By the 1960s, Scrabble
was a hustler's game.

00:29:00.972 --> 00:29:03.274
The first tournament
was held in the sixties.

00:29:03.274 --> 00:29:04.776
In the early '70s,

00:29:04.776 --> 00:29:07.812
Scrabble Association is
formed by Selchow and Righter,

00:29:07.812 --> 00:29:10.081
the company that owned
the game at the time.

00:29:10.081 --> 00:29:12.150
Players start forming tournaments,

00:29:12.150 --> 00:29:14.919
there's an organized circuit
that starts to emerge.

00:29:14.919 --> 00:29:17.489
Competitive Scrabble took a big jump

00:29:17.489 --> 00:29:21.259
when people started having
tournaments in resort hotels

00:29:21.259 --> 00:29:23.762
for the weekend and there
was one in Grossinger's

00:29:23.762 --> 00:29:26.431
and there was one at Mt.
Airy Lodge in the Poconos.

00:29:26.431 --> 00:29:28.466
But the big tournament in New York

00:29:28.466 --> 00:29:29.968
was the Parks Department.

00:29:29.968 --> 00:29:31.603
The city sponsored a tournament

00:29:31.603 --> 00:29:34.172
at the Brooklyn War
Memorial in Cadman Plaza

00:29:34.172 --> 00:29:35.607
and I was there once.

00:29:35.607 --> 00:29:38.943
In 1976, there was a
place called The Game Room

00:29:38.943 --> 00:29:41.146
in the old Beacon Theater in Manhattan.

00:29:41.146 --> 00:29:43.081
And at the Game Room, there were monthly

00:29:43.081 --> 00:29:45.683
or bi-monthly Scrabble
tournaments for money.

00:29:45.683 --> 00:29:47.986
Really, the New York area
was the center of this stuff

00:29:47.986 --> 00:29:50.922
and it gradually spread to
other parts of the country.

00:29:50.922 --> 00:29:52.157
In the early 80s,

00:29:52.157 --> 00:29:54.926
there were Scrabble tournaments
at least every month.

00:29:54.926 --> 00:29:57.462
And now, there are like
two or three every weekend.

00:29:59.030 --> 00:30:01.399
- I started playing
Scrabble in the mid-50s

00:30:01.399 --> 00:30:05.403
in a bar in Chicago with
a bunch of game freaks,

00:30:05.403 --> 00:30:07.472
and I didn't take it too seriously,

00:30:07.472 --> 00:30:09.240
but I was pretty good at it.

00:30:09.240 --> 00:30:10.842
I was beating all my friends.

00:30:10.842 --> 00:30:15.079
In the mid-70s, I saw an
article in "The New York Times"

00:30:15.079 --> 00:30:17.382
about an open tournament in Brooklyn.

00:30:17.382 --> 00:30:20.485
I went out and realized
there were some other players

00:30:20.485 --> 00:30:23.588
that were just as good as I was (laughs)

00:30:23.588 --> 00:30:25.323
and I wanted to play them more.

00:30:25.323 --> 00:30:27.792
So, I started playing in the tournaments

00:30:27.792 --> 00:30:29.460
and I got into one of the clubs.

00:30:29.460 --> 00:30:32.297
And I was just became part of the culture.

00:30:32.297 --> 00:30:34.332
It was fun, it was social,

00:30:34.332 --> 00:30:35.800
but it was also competitive.

00:30:35.800 --> 00:30:38.670
It was really nice to
play a bunch of people

00:30:38.670 --> 00:30:40.171
that I couldn't beat (laughs).

00:30:41.372 --> 00:30:45.877
And I met the love of
my life in the Beacon

00:30:45.877 --> 00:30:48.746
and I made a lot of
friendships over the years.

00:30:52.517 --> 00:30:54.519
- This is the Manhattan Scrabble club.

00:30:54.519 --> 00:30:57.188
It's known as the Scrabble Club Number 56

00:30:57.188 --> 00:30:59.123
for over 30 years now.

00:30:59.123 --> 00:31:03.127
I started directing it in the late 1990s.

00:31:03.127 --> 00:31:05.296
This space is the Honors Bridge Club,

00:31:05.296 --> 00:31:07.232
and we pay them a hefty rent

00:31:07.232 --> 00:31:09.801
and people show up and we
play every Thursday night.

00:31:11.069 --> 00:31:12.403
Our attendance tends to range

00:31:12.403 --> 00:31:14.939
from the low teens to the mid-twenties.

00:31:14.939 --> 00:31:16.207
We play four games

00:31:16.207 --> 00:31:19.110
and we have a range of skill levels

00:31:19.110 --> 00:31:22.780
from pretty much beginner to
almost top level of experts.

00:31:22.780 --> 00:31:23.948
I make the pairings,

00:31:23.948 --> 00:31:26.351
I tell people who they
are going to play against,

00:31:26.351 --> 00:31:28.286
I make rulings when there are questions

00:31:28.286 --> 00:31:32.824
regarding procedures and I
also rule on word challenges.

00:31:32.824 --> 00:31:35.927
- I first joined the Scrabble club in 1999

00:31:35.927 --> 00:31:38.363
and I try my best to never miss a Thursday

00:31:38.363 --> 00:31:39.631
because I love the game,

00:31:39.631 --> 00:31:41.532
I'm highly addicted and if I am not here,

00:31:41.532 --> 00:31:43.201
I am playing it online at home.

00:31:43.201 --> 00:31:45.737
Joel was saying something
about one of the worst players

00:31:45.737 --> 00:31:48.506
that ever entered the portals of the club.

00:31:48.506 --> 00:31:50.074
I have improved, but not that much,

00:31:50.074 --> 00:31:52.210
but enough to keep me happy
and apparently Joel too.

00:31:52.210 --> 00:31:54.212
I love it, I really love it.

00:31:54.212 --> 00:31:56.314
- It's a challenge, it's rewarding,

00:31:56.314 --> 00:31:58.216
it is artistically satisfying

00:31:58.216 --> 00:31:59.851
'cause I think the game has a beauty.

00:31:59.851 --> 00:32:01.753
And I guess also when I started playing,

00:32:01.753 --> 00:32:04.956
I remember thinking it was as though

00:32:04.956 --> 00:32:07.258
I were in prehistoric times

00:32:07.258 --> 00:32:09.694
and I felt like the cave people

00:32:09.694 --> 00:32:12.030
might have felt having
to live by your wits

00:32:12.030 --> 00:32:13.598
because you never knew
what was going to happen

00:32:13.598 --> 00:32:16.534
in any given day and I
still feel that way today.

00:32:17.635 --> 00:32:19.671
- [Reporter] I'm Paul
Messina in Jackson Heights

00:32:19.671 --> 00:32:22.974
where the historic Scrabble
Club meets every month.

00:32:22.974 --> 00:32:24.042
Why historic?

00:32:24.042 --> 00:32:26.344
Because while there are
other Scrabble clubs

00:32:26.344 --> 00:32:27.378
in New York City,

00:32:27.378 --> 00:32:29.714
this is the only one
that plays in the place

00:32:29.714 --> 00:32:31.849
where Scrabble was born.

00:32:31.849 --> 00:32:35.286
- The spirit of Scrabble still
exists in Jackson Heights

00:32:35.286 --> 00:32:37.388
because of the street sign

00:32:37.388 --> 00:32:40.491
and also because of the plaque
on the Community Church.

00:32:40.491 --> 00:32:42.593
The Scrabble Club at Community Church,

00:32:42.593 --> 00:32:43.728
we wanted to host it there

00:32:43.728 --> 00:32:47.332
because that apparently
was the real location

00:32:47.332 --> 00:32:52.036
where Alfred Butts with
the community in the 1930s,

00:32:52.036 --> 00:32:55.006
put out a canvas prototype of the board

00:32:55.006 --> 00:32:57.375
and played it with
community members there.

00:32:57.375 --> 00:32:58.876
And that was very exciting

00:32:58.876 --> 00:33:01.546
to be in the place where
the game originated

00:33:01.546 --> 00:33:04.549
and that Alfred Butts was actually there.

00:33:04.549 --> 00:33:06.417
(bright music)

00:33:06.417 --> 00:33:11.022
- Scrabble has been played
competitively since the 1970s.

00:33:11.022 --> 00:33:12.857
And since that time,

00:33:12.857 --> 00:33:16.094
some different
organizations have organized

00:33:16.094 --> 00:33:17.996
competitive Scrabble play.

00:33:17.996 --> 00:33:21.499
The North American Scrabble
Players Association,

00:33:21.499 --> 00:33:24.802
which is a player-run organization.

00:33:24.802 --> 00:33:27.205
Here in North America,
that's the organization

00:33:27.205 --> 00:33:29.340
that we play these tournaments under.

00:33:31.075 --> 00:33:33.044
The tournament we're at today

00:33:33.044 --> 00:33:36.848
is the July 4th Albany Tournament.

00:33:36.848 --> 00:33:39.684
We've been playing this
tournament for 20 years.

00:33:39.684 --> 00:33:42.653
And we have lots of players here

00:33:42.653 --> 00:33:44.822
having fun playing Scrabble.

00:33:44.822 --> 00:33:46.991
They'll play twenty-three
games of Scrabble

00:33:46.991 --> 00:33:50.495
over the course of four
days for our main event.

00:33:50.495 --> 00:33:53.731
People are paying an entry
fee and can win prizes,

00:33:53.731 --> 00:33:57.602
but generally, people are
here for the camaraderie,

00:33:57.602 --> 00:34:00.304
as much as they are here for prize money.

00:34:01.773 --> 00:34:06.744
Competitive Scrabble attracts
a wide variety of people

00:34:06.744 --> 00:34:08.646
who share one thing in common.

00:34:08.646 --> 00:34:11.115
They love this game.

00:34:11.115 --> 00:34:12.717
So, at some point in their life,

00:34:12.717 --> 00:34:14.485
they came across Scrabble

00:34:14.485 --> 00:34:18.389
and figured out that making words

00:34:18.389 --> 00:34:21.059
was a thing that gave
them like a dopamine hit.

00:34:21.959 --> 00:34:23.661
They come from all walks of life,

00:34:23.661 --> 00:34:26.697
professionals to non-professionals.

00:34:28.666 --> 00:34:30.268
- It is quite a diverse community.

00:34:30.268 --> 00:34:31.469
You have people in this tournament

00:34:31.469 --> 00:34:34.138
probably up to 90 years
old right down to kids.

00:34:35.506 --> 00:34:38.443
Everyone can get along, speak
the same language, it's great.

00:34:38.443 --> 00:34:40.144
- We have a significant number

00:34:40.144 --> 00:34:42.914
of people who have had autism,

00:34:42.914 --> 00:34:45.750
and the ones that stay
are generally the ones

00:34:45.750 --> 00:34:47.885
that are very good at the game.

00:34:47.885 --> 00:34:49.353
We have some top flight players.

00:34:49.353 --> 00:34:51.956
Our National Champion has autism

00:34:51.956 --> 00:34:53.624
and it's a great outlet for them.

00:34:55.093 --> 00:34:55.927
- [Announcer] Ladies and gentlemen,

00:34:55.927 --> 00:34:58.963
we have a brand new
North American Champion,

00:34:58.963 --> 00:35:01.699
Mr. Alec Sjoholmn,
congratulations from all of us.

00:35:01.699 --> 00:35:04.502
21 years old and already
a national champion.

00:35:04.502 --> 00:35:07.505
(audience applauds)

00:35:09.574 --> 00:35:10.441
What are you most happy about.

00:35:10.441 --> 00:35:11.976
the fact that you won $10,000

00:35:11.976 --> 00:35:14.412
or the fact that you are
now a national champion?

00:35:14.412 --> 00:35:16.714
- The fact that I'm now a champion.

00:35:16.714 --> 00:35:18.249
- Same.

00:35:18.249 --> 00:35:22.019
- Men, women, we have people
here from other countries,

00:35:22.019 --> 00:35:24.422
but the one thing that binds everybody

00:35:24.422 --> 00:35:27.658
is the love of this particular game.

00:35:27.658 --> 00:35:28.493
- 18, 19, 20.

00:35:30.261 --> 00:35:32.797
- We have players of all
different skill levels

00:35:32.797 --> 00:35:34.632
playing with us this weekend

00:35:34.632 --> 00:35:36.467
grouped into divisions.

00:35:36.467 --> 00:35:39.137
Very high-end divisions that include

00:35:39.137 --> 00:35:40.538
some of the best players,

00:35:40.538 --> 00:35:43.074
not only in North America, but the world.

00:35:43.074 --> 00:35:45.643
And then we have lower divisions

00:35:45.643 --> 00:35:49.547
where people are here for
the fun and the experience.

00:35:51.482 --> 00:35:52.316
- I have won

00:35:52.316 --> 00:35:55.086
the North American School
Scrabble Championships twice.

00:35:55.086 --> 00:35:58.089
I flew here to Albany for
this tournament specifically,

00:35:58.089 --> 00:36:00.525
and my dad also is here and he's playing,

00:36:00.525 --> 00:36:03.327
although he is in a
lower division than I am.

00:36:03.327 --> 00:36:07.765
I'll go to probably around
five or six tournaments a year

00:36:07.765 --> 00:36:08.933
all over the country.

00:36:08.933 --> 00:36:12.036
I really enjoy it and
that's kind of my thing.

00:36:12.036 --> 00:36:14.906
I meet new people or see old friends

00:36:14.906 --> 00:36:17.208
who I've seen at previous tournaments

00:36:17.208 --> 00:36:18.843
and that's always fun to catch up

00:36:18.843 --> 00:36:22.180
and play some games and yeah.

00:36:24.148 --> 00:36:26.717
- I do think him having
success at a young age

00:36:26.717 --> 00:36:28.152
has given him a lot of confidence.

00:36:28.152 --> 00:36:30.354
He has a great cadre of contemporaries

00:36:30.354 --> 00:36:33.157
that have grown up
together playing the game

00:36:33.157 --> 00:36:36.127
and he has gained an
ability to relate to people

00:36:36.127 --> 00:36:37.261
and communicate with people

00:36:37.261 --> 00:36:38.963
that I don't think he
would have had otherwise.

00:36:38.963 --> 00:36:41.132
It's been rather remarkable
to watch him develop,

00:36:41.132 --> 00:36:43.601
not just as a Scrabble
player, but as a young man.

00:36:45.169 --> 00:36:46.904
- Playing with us at this tournament,

00:36:46.904 --> 00:36:48.639
we have Will Anderson,

00:36:48.639 --> 00:36:52.176
who was the North American
Scrabble Champion.

00:36:52.176 --> 00:36:54.912
We also have Matthew O'Connor,

00:36:54.912 --> 00:36:58.382
who was the World Youth Scrabble Champion

00:36:58.382 --> 00:37:00.117
just a few years ago.

00:37:00.117 --> 00:37:02.653
What everybody appreciates about this game

00:37:02.653 --> 00:37:05.590
is not only playing the game on the board,

00:37:05.590 --> 00:37:09.360
but seeing their friends,
their extended family,

00:37:09.360 --> 00:37:11.762
that binds this community together.

00:37:11.762 --> 00:37:14.332
(bright music)

00:37:26.244 --> 00:37:28.112
(upbeat music)

00:37:28.112 --> 00:37:29.180
In answer to the question

00:37:29.180 --> 00:37:31.649
of what makes Scrabble such a great game

00:37:31.649 --> 00:37:34.585
and what Alfred Butts
got right about the game,

00:37:34.585 --> 00:37:38.189
well, first of all, it's a
15 by 15 board and 100 tiles.

00:37:38.189 --> 00:37:41.292
So, all the tiles will
play, generally speaking.

00:37:41.292 --> 00:37:43.861
Most games will play to completion.

00:37:43.861 --> 00:37:46.097
The distribution of letters

00:37:46.097 --> 00:37:48.266
is one of the things he really got right.

00:37:48.266 --> 00:37:50.701
Not too many letters, not too few.

00:37:50.701 --> 00:37:53.170
The vowel consonant ratio, he got right.

00:37:53.170 --> 00:37:58.175
42 vowels, 58 consonants, give
or take a couple of blanks.

00:37:58.476 --> 00:37:59.910
The distribution of letters,

00:37:59.910 --> 00:38:02.613
there are twelve Es, there's one Z.

00:38:02.613 --> 00:38:04.282
That distribution works as well.

00:38:04.282 --> 00:38:07.218
Not that you're not going to
get too many Is occasionally

00:38:07.218 --> 00:38:08.519
or too many consonants,

00:38:08.519 --> 00:38:10.755
but if you are good at the game

00:38:10.755 --> 00:38:12.857
and you know how to strategize,

00:38:12.857 --> 00:38:14.692
what to play and what not to play,

00:38:14.692 --> 00:38:18.095
your racks will turn out to
be better more often than not.

00:38:18.095 --> 00:38:22.099
Points values of the
letters works really well,

00:38:22.099 --> 00:38:24.935
and the bonus squares going diagonally,

00:38:24.935 --> 00:38:27.571
as they are sprinkled throughout
the rest of the board,

00:38:27.571 --> 00:38:29.073
that works out really well.

00:38:29.073 --> 00:38:31.175
All of those features work together

00:38:31.175 --> 00:38:32.643
really well in this game.

00:38:32.643 --> 00:38:34.445
- To me, it's a perfect game.

00:38:34.445 --> 00:38:36.180
Luck and skill

00:38:36.180 --> 00:38:38.416
are the two most essential
ingredients of the game

00:38:38.416 --> 00:38:40.918
and it balances it incredibly well.

00:38:40.918 --> 00:38:43.888
The way the game is
designed, you make one play,

00:38:43.888 --> 00:38:46.524
there's a counter play almost every time.

00:38:46.524 --> 00:38:47.858
And it's up to the players to figure out

00:38:47.858 --> 00:38:50.628
how to minimize that and
to outwit their opponents.

00:38:51.562 --> 00:38:53.030
Chess is a game of perfect information,

00:38:53.030 --> 00:38:55.399
you see all the pieces in
front of you, all the time.

00:38:55.399 --> 00:38:57.134
Scrabble's a game of imperfect information

00:38:57.134 --> 00:38:59.670
because the tiles are hidden in a bag,

00:38:59.670 --> 00:39:02.006
other than the ones that are
on your rack or on the board.

00:39:02.006 --> 00:39:04.642
And that mystery is where
the luck element comes in.

00:39:04.642 --> 00:39:07.345
And what that does is
that it makes the game

00:39:07.345 --> 00:39:11.449
simultaneously exhilarating
and incredibly frustrating

00:39:11.449 --> 00:39:13.951
because you are not always in control.

00:39:13.951 --> 00:39:16.320
And that element is super important

00:39:16.320 --> 00:39:20.257
to why the game gets a hold
of you and doesn't let go

00:39:20.257 --> 00:39:21.992
because every game is different.

00:39:21.992 --> 00:39:24.095
- Scrabble is one of those things

00:39:24.095 --> 00:39:26.130
that is accessible to everybody.

00:39:26.130 --> 00:39:29.266
I don't care how smart you
are or how not smart you are.

00:39:29.266 --> 00:39:30.568
If you know language at all,

00:39:30.568 --> 00:39:34.105
then you can spell a word
and put it on the board

00:39:34.105 --> 00:39:36.474
and there are 10 different
places you may play it,

00:39:36.474 --> 00:39:38.576
but you know that points are involved,

00:39:38.576 --> 00:39:41.612
so you look for the place that
gives you the most points.

00:39:41.612 --> 00:39:43.514
So, there's points involved,

00:39:43.514 --> 00:39:45.750
there's strategy,

00:39:45.750 --> 00:39:49.587
there's being with people
that you like playing a game,

00:39:49.587 --> 00:39:50.654
there's luck

00:39:50.654 --> 00:39:53.424
and that's an important
positive feature of the game

00:39:53.424 --> 00:39:55.826
because you're not always going to win.

00:39:55.826 --> 00:39:57.261
If you're the best player in the world,

00:39:57.261 --> 00:39:58.262
you're still not always going to win.

00:39:58.262 --> 00:40:00.631
And that positive feature allows champions

00:40:00.631 --> 00:40:03.000
to play with lesser players
and they can beat you

00:40:03.000 --> 00:40:04.468
and they know they can beat you

00:40:04.468 --> 00:40:06.904
if they get the right
letters and they play well.

00:40:08.339 --> 00:40:10.908
(bright music)

00:40:18.115 --> 00:40:19.450
(bright music)

00:40:19.450 --> 00:40:20.284
- Why do I like Scrabble?

00:40:20.284 --> 00:40:21.719
Well, let me answer that.

00:40:21.719 --> 00:40:25.689
There are several components
of using your brain,

00:40:25.689 --> 00:40:27.291
well, and using your luck too.

00:40:27.291 --> 00:40:31.162
Most importantly, it combines
mathematics with language.

00:40:31.162 --> 00:40:33.130
You have to know your vocabulary

00:40:33.130 --> 00:40:35.065
and you have to be able to see

00:40:35.065 --> 00:40:38.536
how the words get placed on the board

00:40:38.536 --> 00:40:42.006
with the premium squares so
as to maximize your points.

00:40:42.006 --> 00:40:44.275
You can know all the words in the world,

00:40:44.275 --> 00:40:47.211
but if you don't know how to
put them on a Scrabble Board,

00:40:47.211 --> 00:40:49.480
you're not going to get very many points.

00:40:49.480 --> 00:40:52.683
- Anagramming is one of the basic keys

00:40:52.683 --> 00:40:54.151
to the enjoyment of the game.

00:40:54.151 --> 00:40:57.822
And why that is, is because
you have a group of letters,

00:40:57.822 --> 00:41:00.090
they're jumbled up, there's
no word there that you see.

00:41:00.090 --> 00:41:04.328
And then, suddenly, you see a word, boom!

00:41:04.328 --> 00:41:05.963
It gets the endorphins going.

00:41:05.963 --> 00:41:09.099
You suddenly feel really good,
you've just found a word.

00:41:09.099 --> 00:41:11.602
- Just that love of language
and that love of words.

00:41:11.602 --> 00:41:15.773
But, also the fact that it's
just such a great social game.

00:41:15.773 --> 00:41:18.442
And it's nice to play
with one other person,

00:41:18.442 --> 00:41:21.679
but then you can even
play with more people

00:41:21.679 --> 00:41:23.681
and that raises the challenge.

00:41:23.681 --> 00:41:28.619
- Scrabble, in my life gave
me the possibility to travel.

00:41:28.619 --> 00:41:29.587
Like I say, I'm from the hood,

00:41:29.587 --> 00:41:33.557
I've met people where I
normally wouldn't have met,

00:41:33.557 --> 00:41:37.094
living in tight-knit community
inside Baltimore City.

00:41:37.094 --> 00:41:39.930
And I've traveled the
country playing Scrabble.

00:41:39.930 --> 00:41:42.333
A few nice people that I've
met, that's been great.

00:41:42.333 --> 00:41:44.969
- I got hooked and involved
in competitive Scrabble

00:41:44.969 --> 00:41:47.638
and that became an incredibly
good source of friendships,

00:41:47.638 --> 00:41:49.540
many of which have lasted to this day.

00:41:50.374 --> 00:41:52.176
- I started playing Scrabble
when I was very little.

00:41:52.176 --> 00:41:55.012
It would have been when
my mom was stay at home

00:41:55.012 --> 00:41:56.046
'cause the kids were little

00:41:56.046 --> 00:41:57.648
and she would play Scrabble with me.

00:41:57.648 --> 00:42:01.218
My first tournament was
in 2007 when I was eight.

00:42:01.218 --> 00:42:04.622
I like Scrabble because I am
a numbers-orientated person.

00:42:04.622 --> 00:42:07.558
Scrabble is actually much
more of a mathematical game

00:42:07.558 --> 00:42:10.194
than a word game, a probability game,

00:42:10.194 --> 00:42:11.996
words are just the rules.

00:42:11.996 --> 00:42:13.564
And it's meant a lot for me because

00:42:13.564 --> 00:42:15.199
sort of my built-in friend group.

00:42:15.199 --> 00:42:17.501
I went off to college, but I
already had my Scrabble friends

00:42:17.501 --> 00:42:18.736
and I am about to graduate college

00:42:18.736 --> 00:42:21.038
but I still have my Scrabble friends.

00:42:21.038 --> 00:42:22.339
- And another great thing about Scrabble

00:42:22.339 --> 00:42:24.141
is no matter what level you are at,

00:42:24.141 --> 00:42:25.509
if you are a beginner or an expert,

00:42:25.509 --> 00:42:27.011
there is something to
enjoy about the game.

00:42:27.011 --> 00:42:28.846
So it never gets boring.

00:42:28.846 --> 00:42:31.215
- Scrabble is certainly
just a huge part of my life.

00:42:31.215 --> 00:42:33.183
My mom played Scrabble, loved Scrabble,

00:42:33.183 --> 00:42:35.386
and just always, always had boards around.

00:42:35.386 --> 00:42:38.289
And then I have seven sisters
and four brothers (laughs),

00:42:38.289 --> 00:42:39.356
so, yeah.

00:42:39.356 --> 00:42:41.191
There were a lot of people
to play Scrabble with.

00:42:41.191 --> 00:42:42.493
My Grandma loved playing too.

00:42:42.493 --> 00:42:43.661
So every time we all got together,

00:42:43.661 --> 00:42:46.597
it would be like four
generations of Scrabblers.

00:42:46.597 --> 00:42:47.731
Just a really great game

00:42:47.731 --> 00:42:49.700
and every rack is a new puzzle to solve

00:42:49.700 --> 00:42:51.969
and shaping the board is another puzzle.

00:42:51.969 --> 00:42:53.270
And so, there's just so
many things to figure out

00:42:53.270 --> 00:42:55.606
and so many things going on.

00:42:55.606 --> 00:42:57.741
You can never get bored no
matter how many games you play,

00:42:57.741 --> 00:42:59.176
it's always a different game.

00:43:00.044 --> 00:43:01.845
- Scrabble has played
a big role in my life

00:43:01.845 --> 00:43:03.681
for the past 14 years now.

00:43:03.681 --> 00:43:05.215
I love the game and I love that every game

00:43:05.215 --> 00:43:07.585
is unlike anything you've seen before.

00:43:07.585 --> 00:43:09.720
There are certain patterns
that you might look for,

00:43:09.720 --> 00:43:12.189
but you have to figure out what to do

00:43:12.189 --> 00:43:13.691
with the chaos in front of you.

00:43:13.691 --> 00:43:16.026
Everything is kind of a free for all.

00:43:16.026 --> 00:43:18.562
- Scrabble is a massive part of my life.

00:43:18.562 --> 00:43:21.298
It takes a while to accept that in a way

00:43:21.298 --> 00:43:23.767
because it's such an obscure hobby.

00:43:23.767 --> 00:43:26.370
Is this really what I'm going to fill

00:43:26.370 --> 00:43:28.372
such a large part of my life with?

00:43:28.372 --> 00:43:30.274
But the more the years go by,

00:43:30.274 --> 00:43:32.743
the more grateful I am
for the wonderful friends

00:43:32.743 --> 00:43:33.978
that I have for the game,

00:43:33.978 --> 00:43:37.381
the fact that it finds ways
to continue to challenge me,

00:43:37.381 --> 00:43:39.183
deliver new experiences,

00:43:39.183 --> 00:43:41.418
introduce me to people
from all over the world.

00:43:41.418 --> 00:43:44.421
It's just an incredibly
rich game and community,

00:43:44.421 --> 00:43:47.358
full of fascinating, quirky people.

00:43:47.358 --> 00:43:50.327
It's incredibly important to my identity

00:43:50.327 --> 00:43:52.062
and I think I'm okay with that now.

00:43:54.999 --> 00:43:58.702
- I've been playing tournament
Scrabble for 14 years now.

00:43:58.702 --> 00:44:01.071
- I've been playing for six years.

00:44:01.071 --> 00:44:03.741
- Yeah, we met at a tournament
in Poughkeepsie, New York,

00:44:03.741 --> 00:44:05.709
and it was 2013.

00:44:05.709 --> 00:44:08.245
And started talking through Facebook,

00:44:08.245 --> 00:44:09.980
playing Facebook Scrabble together.

00:44:10.848 --> 00:44:13.350
Yeah, and we started dating that Fall

00:44:13.350 --> 00:44:15.219
and have been together since.

00:44:16.553 --> 00:44:18.622
- We got married almost a year ago now.

00:44:21.191 --> 00:44:24.061
We just bought a house and we
even bought a special table

00:44:24.061 --> 00:44:25.362
specifically for Scrabble.

00:44:26.497 --> 00:44:27.731
- Scrabble brought us together.

00:44:27.731 --> 00:44:29.767
It was a Scrabble love story

00:44:29.767 --> 00:44:33.103
and yeah, it's been pretty wonderful.

00:44:38.842 --> 00:44:41.445
(bright music)

00:44:48.018 --> 00:44:50.020
(bright music)

00:44:50.020 --> 00:44:51.221
- So, by the late 1970s,

00:44:51.221 --> 00:44:53.190
players had figured out that,

00:44:53.190 --> 00:44:54.491
if you want to master this game,

00:44:54.491 --> 00:44:55.526
you had to figure out what words

00:44:55.526 --> 00:44:57.594
were most likely to
show up most frequently.

00:44:57.594 --> 00:45:00.064
And the way to do that was
to go through the dictionary

00:45:00.064 --> 00:45:00.998
and write down the words

00:45:00.998 --> 00:45:03.600
that contained the most
frequently occurring letters.

00:45:03.600 --> 00:45:05.035
So they started writing down

00:45:05.035 --> 00:45:07.371
all the two letter words
that were acceptable

00:45:07.371 --> 00:45:08.939
and writing down all
the three letter words

00:45:08.939 --> 00:45:10.140
that were acceptable.

00:45:10.140 --> 00:45:11.975
Butts figured that out by counting

00:45:11.975 --> 00:45:14.178
and Butts gave the players the template.

00:45:14.178 --> 00:45:15.612
And then, Selchow and Righter

00:45:15.612 --> 00:45:16.914
teamed up with Merriam Webster

00:45:16.914 --> 00:45:18.549
and in 1978 published

00:45:18.549 --> 00:45:20.718
the first official "Scrabble
Players Dictionary,"

00:45:20.718 --> 00:45:23.320
which was a collection
of words that appeared

00:45:23.320 --> 00:45:26.490
in any of five standard
college dictionaries.

00:45:26.490 --> 00:45:30.060
These are regular words that
lexicographers have determined

00:45:30.060 --> 00:45:32.763
are part of the English
language, it's a rule book.

00:45:32.763 --> 00:45:35.032
Someone once told me that
the Scrabble Dictionary

00:45:35.032 --> 00:45:36.467
isn't a dictionary at all,

00:45:36.467 --> 00:45:38.836
it's a way to keep people
from killing each other.

00:45:38.836 --> 00:45:40.137
- One thing I liked about it was,

00:45:40.137 --> 00:45:42.106
while the game is complicated,

00:45:42.106 --> 00:45:45.075
the dictionary was large but finite.

00:45:45.075 --> 00:45:46.877
And I liked the idea
that that was something

00:45:46.877 --> 00:45:48.612
that could theoretically be mastered

00:45:48.612 --> 00:45:51.348
or at least that could be the goal.

00:45:51.348 --> 00:45:54.451
- I had been looking for
something to do with my life.

00:45:54.451 --> 00:45:56.653
And when that dictionary was published,

00:45:56.653 --> 00:45:58.922
I kind of knew that that's
what I wanted to do.

00:45:58.922 --> 00:46:01.925
I wanted to get involved in
becoming a really good player

00:46:01.925 --> 00:46:03.527
and also possibly helping

00:46:03.527 --> 00:46:05.963
to create a good
organization for Scrabble.

00:46:05.963 --> 00:46:08.465
When I realized that there
was a National Championship

00:46:08.465 --> 00:46:10.033
that happened in '78,

00:46:10.033 --> 00:46:11.602
I said I want to get into this

00:46:11.602 --> 00:46:13.170
and I threw myself into it.

00:46:13.170 --> 00:46:15.572
I wanted to become the
next National Champion.

00:46:15.572 --> 00:46:18.108
And I spent probably eight hours a day

00:46:18.108 --> 00:46:20.144
for the next two years in Scrabble,

00:46:20.144 --> 00:46:22.346
studying it, reading about it, playing.

00:46:22.346 --> 00:46:23.781
And I in fact did win

00:46:23.781 --> 00:46:25.849
the next National Championship in 1980.

00:46:26.984 --> 00:46:30.954
The skillset that people
need to become professional,

00:46:30.954 --> 00:46:33.457
if there is such a thing as
professional Scrabble players

00:46:33.457 --> 00:46:35.993
are exactly the same things

00:46:35.993 --> 00:46:37.795
you need to learn in real life

00:46:37.795 --> 00:46:41.298
to be a mature adult and
to have a successful life.

00:46:41.298 --> 00:46:43.567
So, you have to learn how
to make good decisions.

00:46:43.567 --> 00:46:46.503
Not always follow your
emotions, but think rationally.

00:46:46.503 --> 00:46:48.005
And also follow your gut.

00:46:48.005 --> 00:46:49.873
You need to learn to memorize some things,

00:46:49.873 --> 00:46:53.010
two and three letter words
specifically, to get going.

00:46:53.010 --> 00:46:54.511
If you're going to be
a professional player,

00:46:54.511 --> 00:46:56.880
you need to learn most of the words.

00:46:56.880 --> 00:46:59.683
I hate memorizing and yet
I learned the dictionary.

00:46:59.683 --> 00:47:02.986
Another great skill of the
game is being able to anagram.

00:47:02.986 --> 00:47:05.422
That comes from just simply practicing.

00:47:05.422 --> 00:47:07.591
That's like shooting a
pool cue or batting a ball,

00:47:07.591 --> 00:47:11.161
you just do it 10,000 times
and you learn how to anagram.

00:47:11.161 --> 00:47:14.364
You start learning the
anagrams for all the words,

00:47:14.364 --> 00:47:17.401
your gut becomes smarter
than your conscious mind.

00:47:17.401 --> 00:47:19.536
Your gut starts telling
you, "There's a word there."

00:47:19.536 --> 00:47:21.338
So you keep looking.

00:47:21.338 --> 00:47:22.372
Trusting your gut

00:47:22.372 --> 00:47:24.374
is one of the important parts of the game.

00:47:24.374 --> 00:47:26.243
You need to make good decisions.

00:47:26.243 --> 00:47:28.412
Scrabble is all about
making good decisions.

00:47:28.412 --> 00:47:30.180
How to look for a word,
the first thing I'll do

00:47:30.180 --> 00:47:31.748
is just stare at the rack for a minute

00:47:31.748 --> 00:47:32.983
without doing anything.

00:47:32.983 --> 00:47:37.454
At a certain level, experts
don't touch their letters,

00:47:38.522 --> 00:47:40.824
they just do everything in their mind.

00:47:40.824 --> 00:47:41.959
I don't touch my letters.

00:47:41.959 --> 00:47:43.460
I put them in alphabetic order

00:47:43.460 --> 00:47:44.828
because I'm doing it all in my head

00:47:44.828 --> 00:47:47.998
and that's a really
good anagrammer will do.

00:47:47.998 --> 00:47:50.467
If you can make a more complex board,

00:47:50.467 --> 00:47:52.502
if you can make a play
that makes it harder

00:47:52.502 --> 00:47:55.072
for your opponent to make a good decision,

00:47:55.072 --> 00:47:58.775
then do it because they may
make a mistake in strategy.

00:47:58.775 --> 00:48:00.277
That's one of the skills in Scrabble,

00:48:00.277 --> 00:48:01.445
you need to know

00:48:01.445 --> 00:48:03.981
when points are more
important than position,

00:48:03.981 --> 00:48:05.482
each one of those is a factor,

00:48:05.482 --> 00:48:08.385
scoring points or
keeping tiles on our rack

00:48:08.385 --> 00:48:09.853
because it's not always
about scoring points,

00:48:09.853 --> 00:48:12.122
it's about keeping good
tiles for a rainy day.

00:48:12.122 --> 00:48:14.491
And also that third factor
of how the board looks.

00:48:14.491 --> 00:48:17.728
Are you making it easier for
your opponent to score well

00:48:17.728 --> 00:48:19.263
or are you making it harder?

00:48:19.263 --> 00:48:20.664
- I think that's my biggest asset

00:48:20.664 --> 00:48:21.999
as a competitor in Scrabble,

00:48:21.999 --> 00:48:24.301
is that I think I have a
really good mental game

00:48:24.301 --> 00:48:26.303
in that, if I make a mistake,

00:48:26.303 --> 00:48:29.072
a lot of people naturally are
going to beat themselves up.

00:48:29.072 --> 00:48:31.508
And I'm able to deal with
it kind of objectively

00:48:31.508 --> 00:48:33.143
and just get on with my life.

00:48:33.143 --> 00:48:35.913
(piano music)

00:48:35.913 --> 00:48:38.982
- The other thing is
learning how to take losing.

00:48:38.982 --> 00:48:40.751
Because of the luck factor,

00:48:40.751 --> 00:48:44.154
you have to know that you could
lose three games in a row.

00:48:44.154 --> 00:48:46.723
And you have to keep your composure

00:48:46.723 --> 00:48:48.392
and be objective and rational,

00:48:48.392 --> 00:48:50.694
and know that you can play your best

00:48:50.694 --> 00:48:52.562
and always give your opponent

00:48:52.562 --> 00:48:54.831
the opportunity to make a mistake.

00:48:54.831 --> 00:48:57.000
And, likewise, when you've beaten someone

00:48:57.000 --> 00:48:58.802
eight times out of ten,

00:48:58.802 --> 00:49:01.138
you can't expect to
beat them that next time

00:49:01.138 --> 00:49:02.906
because they could get
a nice series of letters

00:49:02.906 --> 00:49:05.042
and you could be thinking
that you're going to win

00:49:05.042 --> 00:49:08.278
without actually trying to
find that very best play,

00:49:08.278 --> 00:49:11.381
and lose because you weren't
strictly playing your best.

00:49:11.381 --> 00:49:14.918
I think most Scrabble
players have a love of words,

00:49:14.918 --> 00:49:16.720
but having said that,

00:49:16.720 --> 00:49:19.890
the Scrabble professionals
don't think of words

00:49:19.890 --> 00:49:23.126
as words per se, they
think of them as tools.

00:49:23.126 --> 00:49:26.263
And it's not the English professors

00:49:26.263 --> 00:49:27.764
who are the Scrabble masters,

00:49:27.764 --> 00:49:30.534
it's the mathematicians
and computer scientists

00:49:30.534 --> 00:49:33.837
and information gatherers
who are the experts

00:49:33.837 --> 00:49:38.075
because it's a math game
more than a language game.

00:49:39.943 --> 00:49:41.511
- Once the tournament scene emerged

00:49:41.511 --> 00:49:43.947
and really grew in the
1980s, a sort of class of

00:49:43.947 --> 00:49:47.050
semi-professional
Scrabble players grew up.

00:49:47.050 --> 00:49:49.553
And now there's kind of a Hall of Fame

00:49:49.553 --> 00:49:51.088
of great Scrabble players,

00:49:51.088 --> 00:49:53.256
Joe Edley, Joel Sherman,

00:49:53.256 --> 00:49:55.859
David Gibson, multiple
time National Champion,

00:49:56.994 --> 00:49:58.528
Nigel Richards, a New Zealander,

00:49:58.528 --> 00:50:00.430
has won the North American
Championship five times

00:50:00.430 --> 00:50:03.166
and the World Championship three times.

00:50:03.166 --> 00:50:07.537
He decided to learn the entire
French lexicon in two months

00:50:07.537 --> 00:50:09.873
and win the French National Championship.

00:50:09.873 --> 00:50:12.242
What makes Nigel Richards so great?

00:50:12.242 --> 00:50:14.011
Number one, he has a photographic memory

00:50:14.011 --> 00:50:15.779
so that gives him a big edge.

00:50:15.779 --> 00:50:17.948
We mortals who don't remember

00:50:17.948 --> 00:50:19.383
whether a word is good or not,

00:50:19.383 --> 00:50:22.285
we sometimes have to forego making a play

00:50:22.285 --> 00:50:23.153
to an advantage there

00:50:23.153 --> 00:50:25.355
and also the advantage of
being able to challenge

00:50:25.355 --> 00:50:27.357
any phony your opponent plays.

00:50:27.357 --> 00:50:30.293
So that's a big edge,
but it's not just that.

00:50:30.293 --> 00:50:32.763
I think he has a real feel for the game

00:50:32.763 --> 00:50:33.930
that most people don't

00:50:33.930 --> 00:50:37.401
in terms of the mathematical
structure of probabilities,

00:50:37.401 --> 00:50:38.468
winning and losing.

00:50:38.468 --> 00:50:40.771
He has something that most people don't.

00:50:40.771 --> 00:50:44.441
- Nigel Richards is the
greatest Scrabble player

00:50:44.441 --> 00:50:46.643
the world will ever see.

00:50:46.643 --> 00:50:48.211
It's an incredible privilege

00:50:48.211 --> 00:50:50.914
to have been able to
compete with him regularly

00:50:50.914 --> 00:50:52.049
these last few years.

00:50:52.049 --> 00:50:54.818
I've played him about
forty times in tournaments.

00:50:54.818 --> 00:50:58.655
He's a pinnacle of perfection.

00:50:58.655 --> 00:51:00.457
He is flawless in his play.

00:51:00.457 --> 00:51:03.193
The errors that he makes
don't even look human

00:51:03.193 --> 00:51:04.227
when they do occur,

00:51:04.227 --> 00:51:06.830
they're almost errors in programming.

00:51:06.830 --> 00:51:08.565
And they're so few and far between

00:51:08.565 --> 00:51:10.767
that when you even get a glimpse of one,

00:51:10.767 --> 00:51:12.335
it's absolutely startling.

00:51:13.336 --> 00:51:14.838
- Rita Norr was the only woman

00:51:14.838 --> 00:51:17.074
that had ever won a National Championship.

00:51:17.074 --> 00:51:19.976
There are more women in
the Scrabble Association

00:51:19.976 --> 00:51:20.977
than there are men.

00:51:20.977 --> 00:51:23.680
And it's a peculiar thing
with women in the game

00:51:23.680 --> 00:51:25.615
because there's really no reason

00:51:25.615 --> 00:51:29.653
why there are more men at
the top than women logically,

00:51:29.653 --> 00:51:32.656
in terms of any sort of
brain power or whatever.

00:51:32.656 --> 00:51:34.291
The only reason I see

00:51:34.291 --> 00:51:39.062
that men are at the top
more than women is cultural.

00:51:39.062 --> 00:51:43.266
The men are more driven to
absolutely have to excel

00:51:43.266 --> 00:51:44.701
or they'll stop playing.

00:51:44.701 --> 00:51:47.037
Men are expected to be up there

00:51:47.037 --> 00:51:50.140
from our terribly lopsided culture.

00:51:50.140 --> 00:51:52.576
I have a dash of testosterone in me too

00:51:52.576 --> 00:51:54.945
because, I was pretty fiercely competitive

00:51:54.945 --> 00:51:56.012
when I was doing it,

00:51:56.012 --> 00:51:59.883
but I can be very happy losing a game

00:51:59.883 --> 00:52:01.818
if I feel I have played it well.

00:52:03.086 --> 00:52:05.455
- In the early 1980s,

00:52:05.455 --> 00:52:07.891
I was a young attorney in
Poughkeepsie at the time

00:52:07.891 --> 00:52:11.795
and was assisting Alfred
with a lot of his affairs.

00:52:11.795 --> 00:52:15.765
And I got to go with him on
public relations appearances.

00:52:15.765 --> 00:52:18.135
He did a number of radio interviews

00:52:18.135 --> 00:52:21.238
and television interviews over the years

00:52:21.238 --> 00:52:24.608
to describe his games and his history.

00:52:24.608 --> 00:52:27.010
He did enjoy the public relations part,

00:52:27.010 --> 00:52:28.712
he found it quite interesting.

00:52:28.712 --> 00:52:30.747
He would be invited, for example,

00:52:30.747 --> 00:52:34.584
to Scrabble tournaments and
be introduced and so forth.

00:52:34.584 --> 00:52:36.419
There was a Scrabble Championship

00:52:36.419 --> 00:52:37.754
that was held in New York City.

00:52:37.754 --> 00:52:41.458
I went down with him and
he was really quite amazed

00:52:41.458 --> 00:52:45.795
at the extent to which
Scrabble became popular

00:52:45.795 --> 00:52:49.065
in tournament play and
the extent of preparation

00:52:49.065 --> 00:52:51.835
that tournament players
take in learning the game

00:52:51.835 --> 00:52:53.803
to be able to play it competitively

00:52:53.803 --> 00:52:56.173
was something that he never expected

00:52:56.173 --> 00:52:58.542
beyond being a living room player.

00:52:58.542 --> 00:53:00.977
- I play this game for the fun of it.

00:53:00.977 --> 00:53:03.513
I would never play in a tournament.

00:53:03.513 --> 00:53:05.248
For one thing, I am not a good player,

00:53:05.248 --> 00:53:06.750
I am a very poor speller,

00:53:06.750 --> 00:53:08.385
but I like playing for the fun of it.

00:53:08.385 --> 00:53:10.453
Now all these people playing it,

00:53:10.453 --> 00:53:13.690
trying to get seven letter
words calling it a bingo,

00:53:13.690 --> 00:53:15.759
I never got one of those in my life

00:53:15.759 --> 00:53:19.062
and they say they get
one every time they play.

00:53:19.062 --> 00:53:20.964
- I only met Alfred twice.

00:53:20.964 --> 00:53:22.465
He was already in his eighties.

00:53:22.465 --> 00:53:25.802
He was a very self-effacing
man and unassuming,

00:53:25.802 --> 00:53:29.372
and just really amazed
at all the hullabaloo

00:53:29.372 --> 00:53:30.707
about his game.

00:53:30.707 --> 00:53:32.976
We turned it into a national game

00:53:32.976 --> 00:53:34.678
and a worldwide game now.

00:53:34.678 --> 00:53:37.347
And he was just really amazed.

00:53:37.347 --> 00:53:39.416
He's just a really nice man.

00:53:39.416 --> 00:53:42.085
I got the impression that Alfred Butts

00:53:42.085 --> 00:53:44.721
perhaps didn't know the
complexity of the game

00:53:44.721 --> 00:53:47.857
that we professionals
found in his invention.

00:53:47.857 --> 00:53:50.760
I mean, it's really remarkable
how much there is in it.

00:53:50.760 --> 00:53:52.929
- I went to some competitive tournament

00:53:52.929 --> 00:53:54.064
and I met Alfred Butts.

00:53:54.064 --> 00:53:55.899
And he was such a nice guy.

00:53:55.899 --> 00:54:00.337
He was very unassuming,
kind of short and quiet.

00:54:00.337 --> 00:54:02.472
But he was introduced as
the inventor of Scrabble.

00:54:02.472 --> 00:54:06.176
People flocked over to him
and he was just a sweetheart.

00:54:06.176 --> 00:54:08.178
I really enjoyed meeting him.

00:54:08.178 --> 00:54:09.813
- It certainly did a
lot for him, the game,

00:54:09.813 --> 00:54:12.916
and we are all grateful for his invention

00:54:12.916 --> 00:54:14.417
because it's a wonderful game.

00:54:19.022 --> 00:54:21.591
(bright music)

00:54:29.699 --> 00:54:34.638
So, by the 1980s, software
starts to be created by players

00:54:34.638 --> 00:54:36.940
that allow you to study
the most probable words,

00:54:36.940 --> 00:54:38.541
allow you to learn more efficiently.

00:54:38.541 --> 00:54:39.709
That's how I started learning

00:54:39.709 --> 00:54:41.177
and this was in the late 1990s.

00:54:41.177 --> 00:54:44.247
I had a computer program, I
would print out lists of words,

00:54:44.247 --> 00:54:46.549
I would study them on
the subway in New York

00:54:46.549 --> 00:54:47.817
or in my living room.

00:54:47.817 --> 00:54:50.220
These early electronic study aids

00:54:50.220 --> 00:54:54.624
leads to the creation of the
first Scrabble-playing program

00:54:54.624 --> 00:54:56.893
by a guy that started working on it

00:54:56.893 --> 00:55:00.397
when he was an intern at
IBM one summer in the 1980s.

00:55:00.397 --> 00:55:01.231
That was Maven,

00:55:01.231 --> 00:55:04.134
that quickly penetrated the
market of competitive players

00:55:04.134 --> 00:55:06.303
and was handed around on floppy disks.

00:55:06.303 --> 00:55:09.806
We get CD-ROMs and then
the internet shows up.

00:55:11.007 --> 00:55:12.375
Hasbro, the owners of the game

00:55:12.375 --> 00:55:15.512
doesn't go a great job of
capitalizing on the internet

00:55:15.512 --> 00:55:16.413
from the very beginning

00:55:16.413 --> 00:55:19.849
and it allows other program
creators to move into the space.

00:55:19.849 --> 00:55:21.184
One of them is Quackle

00:55:21.184 --> 00:55:25.255
that was invented by two
young guys in the early 2000s.

00:55:25.255 --> 00:55:27.123
Scrabulous was hugely popular

00:55:27.123 --> 00:55:28.591
at the sort of dawn of Facebook.

00:55:28.591 --> 00:55:31.061
Hasbro ends up sending them
a Cease and Desist letter

00:55:31.061 --> 00:55:32.729
and forcing them out of business.

00:55:35.165 --> 00:55:38.268
- I was visiting a friend from Norway

00:55:38.268 --> 00:55:42.005
and I noticed she was doing
something with her phone

00:55:42.005 --> 00:55:43.740
and I asked her what she was doing

00:55:43.740 --> 00:55:47.610
and she said, "I'm playing
Scrabble on my phone

00:55:47.610 --> 00:55:50.480
with my friends and my
mom back in Norway."

00:55:50.480 --> 00:55:53.350
She played this game called Wordfeud,

00:55:53.350 --> 00:55:55.118
which is exactly like Scrabble

00:55:55.118 --> 00:55:58.621
and she would play French
Scrabble with her mother,

00:55:58.621 --> 00:56:02.726
she'd play Norwegian Scrabble
with her Norwegian friends

00:56:02.726 --> 00:56:05.695
and then she'd play with me in English.

00:56:05.695 --> 00:56:09.065
My mother lives five-hour
drive away from where I live

00:56:09.065 --> 00:56:12.736
and now we've been playing
online Scrabble now

00:56:12.736 --> 00:56:16.840
for eight months and it's kinda fun.

00:56:16.840 --> 00:56:18.308
We play every day

00:56:18.308 --> 00:56:20.443
and even though we might not be talking,

00:56:20.443 --> 00:56:22.112
I know she is on the other end.

00:56:22.112 --> 00:56:23.513
So it's been a lot of fun,

00:56:23.513 --> 00:56:26.116
it's brought my mum and I together.

00:56:26.116 --> 00:56:27.851
The great thing about the online version

00:56:27.851 --> 00:56:30.820
is you don't have to
be physically available

00:56:30.820 --> 00:56:32.789
to sit down with your opponent

00:56:32.789 --> 00:56:37.560
and it's reinvented Scrabble
for the 21st Century.

00:56:37.560 --> 00:56:40.663
- My Scrabble journey has been digital.

00:56:40.663 --> 00:56:42.332
I stumbled across Scrabble

00:56:42.332 --> 00:56:45.235
as a seventeen-year old in high school.

00:56:45.235 --> 00:56:46.503
I had applied to college,

00:56:46.503 --> 00:56:49.272
had more free time than
I'd had in the past,

00:56:49.272 --> 00:56:50.573
and I was very bad.

00:56:50.573 --> 00:56:52.609
I was not a skilled Scrabble player.

00:56:52.609 --> 00:56:54.677
But I quickly got addicted.

00:56:54.677 --> 00:56:56.846
I was playing online an hour or two a day

00:56:56.846 --> 00:56:58.481
and I improved really quickly.

00:56:58.481 --> 00:57:02.419
And I happened to hear about
the tournament scene in person.

00:57:02.419 --> 00:57:06.089
Now I've been playing for almost 15 years.

00:57:06.089 --> 00:57:10.360
I see the future of
Scrabble as being rich.

00:57:10.360 --> 00:57:12.228
I think there's going
to be more and more ways

00:57:12.228 --> 00:57:17.233
that you can participate and
play on the fly, on the go.

00:57:17.567 --> 00:57:19.536
Now that we all have smart phones,

00:57:19.536 --> 00:57:22.505
a lot of small gaps in
the day that you fill

00:57:22.505 --> 00:57:24.007
by pulling out your smart phone.

00:57:24.007 --> 00:57:24.841
And, more and more,

00:57:24.841 --> 00:57:27.710
I see people playing
Scrabble on the subway

00:57:27.710 --> 00:57:29.212
or :Words with Friends."

00:57:29.212 --> 00:57:30.280
The future is bright,

00:57:30.280 --> 00:57:32.482
there's some kind of
intrinsic appeal to the game

00:57:32.482 --> 00:57:35.452
that seems to keep drawing
new generations of players

00:57:35.452 --> 00:57:39.155
who are using completely
different media and forms

00:57:39.155 --> 00:57:41.024
and spaces to play.

00:57:41.024 --> 00:57:44.260
- I was playing Scrabble
online from the early 90s,

00:57:44.260 --> 00:57:46.062
when I was still playing in tournaments.

00:57:46.062 --> 00:57:48.064
And when I stopped playing in tournaments

00:57:48.064 --> 00:57:49.666
and stopped going to the club

00:57:49.666 --> 00:57:51.701
'cause it was a bit of an effort for me

00:57:51.701 --> 00:57:53.703
to travel at night at my age.

00:57:53.703 --> 00:57:56.072
I started playing Words with Friends

00:57:56.072 --> 00:57:59.108
with a lot of top players
that were still my friends.

00:57:59.108 --> 00:58:00.510
So I am still connecting

00:58:00.510 --> 00:58:03.279
with the Scrabble community through it.

00:58:03.279 --> 00:58:05.381
- The potential for the game was clear,

00:58:05.381 --> 00:58:07.350
that this is a game that,

00:58:07.350 --> 00:58:09.686
again, going back to the sort
of brilliance of Alfred Butts,

00:58:09.686 --> 00:58:11.421
not that he ever could
have predicted any of this,

00:58:11.421 --> 00:58:13.456
but Scrabble was perfectly designed,

00:58:13.456 --> 00:58:15.191
like a lot of games, for

00:58:15.191 --> 00:58:17.260
playing online, playing
in a digital world.

00:58:17.260 --> 00:58:18.962
The cultural penetration continues.

00:58:18.962 --> 00:58:20.530
Scrabble has been on "The Simpsons."

00:58:20.530 --> 00:58:23.433
The last two Democratic
Presidents played Scrabble.

00:58:23.433 --> 00:58:25.134
- You have an iPad?
- I do.

00:58:25.134 --> 00:58:27.837
- Yes, what app?
- Scrabble.

00:58:27.837 --> 00:58:30.773
- Oh yes, gosh sometimes
I want to yank that

00:58:30.773 --> 00:58:31.908
out of your hands.

00:58:31.908 --> 00:58:34.410
- Scrabble's everywhere,
it's sort of unavoidable.

00:58:34.410 --> 00:58:36.980
(upbeat music)

00:58:39.549 --> 00:58:42.785
You'll see it in movies,
you'll see it in TV episodes.

00:58:42.785 --> 00:58:46.856
ESPN covered the Adult and
Youth Scrabble Championships

00:58:46.856 --> 00:58:47.891
for six years.

00:58:47.891 --> 00:58:49.993
We weren't a threat to the NFL,

00:58:49.993 --> 00:58:54.564
but the validation of being on
national television like that

00:58:54.564 --> 00:58:56.900
says something about, again,
what Alfred Butts created

00:58:56.900 --> 00:59:00.103
and about the role of games
and competition in our culture.

00:59:00.103 --> 00:59:02.505
It turned out that my daughter
had an aptitude for it

00:59:02.505 --> 00:59:04.807
and has become a
tournament player like me.

00:59:04.807 --> 00:59:05.909
And I coach kids,

00:59:05.909 --> 00:59:08.444
I go to my local middle school every week

00:59:08.444 --> 00:59:12.315
and coach 20 loud, funny, irreverent,

00:59:12.315 --> 00:59:16.219
enthusiastic middle schoolers
that love playing this game.

00:59:19.055 --> 00:59:21.624
(bright music)

00:59:28.231 --> 00:59:30.800
(bright music)

00:59:31.901 --> 00:59:33.603
- Alfred purchased the property

00:59:33.603 --> 00:59:36.906
and he and his wife
Nina used the homestead

00:59:36.906 --> 00:59:39.976
as a summer home and weekend place

00:59:39.976 --> 00:59:43.246
until finally in 1978,

00:59:43.246 --> 00:59:46.249
Alfred sold his apartment
at Jackson Heights

00:59:46.249 --> 00:59:49.319
and moved up to Stanfordville full time.

00:59:49.319 --> 00:59:50.920
He was active in the community.

00:59:50.920 --> 00:59:54.457
He was one of the founders
of the Stanford Free Library

00:59:54.457 --> 00:59:55.725
in Stanfordville.

00:59:55.725 --> 00:59:58.161
He designed the library building,

00:59:58.161 --> 01:00:01.464
basically did much good
work in the community.

01:00:01.464 --> 01:00:04.500
Nina died in early 1979.

01:00:04.500 --> 01:00:06.002
They didn't have any children,

01:00:06.002 --> 01:00:09.472
but she was his closest
companion throughout her life.

01:00:09.472 --> 01:00:12.008
She was also his best critic

01:00:12.008 --> 01:00:15.645
in terms of while he was
inventing games and so forth.

01:00:15.645 --> 01:00:18.948
And he often would say that
she was the better speller

01:00:18.948 --> 01:00:22.151
and was probably also the
better Scrabble player.

01:00:22.151 --> 01:00:24.721
One of the noteworthy stories about Nina

01:00:24.721 --> 01:00:28.891
was that they were playing
Scrabble once in the 1950s.

01:00:28.891 --> 01:00:32.462
- My wife was a good player,
she made the word quixotic

01:00:32.462 --> 01:00:34.631
and she made it along
the edge of the board

01:00:34.631 --> 01:00:36.866
going from one triple word score

01:00:36.866 --> 01:00:39.102
down to the other triple word score.

01:00:39.102 --> 01:00:41.471
- I think the score for that play alone

01:00:41.471 --> 01:00:43.840
was about 254 points.

01:00:43.840 --> 01:00:46.442
Upon her death, he started looking around

01:00:46.442 --> 01:00:47.944
for something to do and he says,

01:00:47.944 --> 01:00:50.013
"Well, maybe I'll go back to inventing."

01:00:50.013 --> 01:00:53.483
He started working on some
new concepts for games

01:00:53.483 --> 01:00:56.586
and in the early 1980s,

01:00:56.586 --> 01:01:00.623
he had a game that might
possibly be marketable.

01:01:00.623 --> 01:01:01.991
I think Selchow and Righter

01:01:01.991 --> 01:01:04.827
were not tremendously
interested in the game,

01:01:04.827 --> 01:01:07.830
but they were interested
in public relations.

01:01:07.830 --> 01:01:10.500
And so an agreement was reached

01:01:10.500 --> 01:01:13.803
where Selchow and
Righter would manufacture

01:01:13.803 --> 01:01:14.971
Alfred's new game.

01:01:14.971 --> 01:01:17.974
And the game box had a picture of Alfred

01:01:17.974 --> 01:01:20.977
dressed up in a tuxedo
sitting in a leather chair

01:01:20.977 --> 01:01:23.780
with a gorgeous brunette.

01:01:23.780 --> 01:01:26.182
- [Alfred] This happened
because I lost my wife.

01:01:27.050 --> 01:01:29.519
- And it was produced
for a couple of years.

01:01:29.519 --> 01:01:32.055
- Alfred was very close with his family.

01:01:32.055 --> 01:01:34.657
When he was residing in Stanfordville,

01:01:34.657 --> 01:01:38.561
he would spend a lot of time
with other family members.

01:01:39.562 --> 01:01:44.567
In the Fall of 1987, we had
a horrendous early snowstorm.

01:01:45.001 --> 01:01:49.172
There was probably two
feet of very wet snow.

01:01:49.172 --> 01:01:51.441
Alfred was living at the
homestead at the time

01:01:51.441 --> 01:01:53.042
and had no power.

01:01:53.042 --> 01:01:54.210
He was in his eighties,

01:01:54.210 --> 01:01:56.079
so he decided that he would leave

01:01:56.079 --> 01:01:57.914
and he would visit his niece.

01:01:57.914 --> 01:02:00.783
To get there, he had to
cross the Taconic Parkway.

01:02:00.783 --> 01:02:03.920
At Hibernia Road and while
crossing the parkway,

01:02:03.920 --> 01:02:06.155
he had an accident where his car was hit

01:02:06.155 --> 01:02:07.623
by a vehicle going south.

01:02:07.623 --> 01:02:09.992
And he sustained head injuries

01:02:09.992 --> 01:02:12.361
and was hospitalized for almost a month

01:02:12.361 --> 01:02:15.498
and never regained the full capacities

01:02:15.498 --> 01:02:17.400
that he had before the accident.

01:02:17.400 --> 01:02:19.202
And then went into a nursing home

01:02:19.202 --> 01:02:21.971
and was there for a couple
of years before he passed on.

01:02:23.372 --> 01:02:25.875
(piano music)

01:02:28.611 --> 01:02:31.314
Alfred was a very meticulous person

01:02:31.314 --> 01:02:34.951
and almost sort of scholarly
and academic in a way.

01:02:34.951 --> 01:02:38.020
Intellectually, he was
a very curious person,

01:02:38.020 --> 01:02:41.491
fascinated by odd facts, very soft spoken,

01:02:41.491 --> 01:02:44.060
but had a very wry sense of humor.

01:02:44.060 --> 01:02:46.295
He always had a sunny disposition.

01:02:47.663 --> 01:02:49.232
Very good natured,

01:02:49.232 --> 01:02:51.400
never had a bad word to say about anybody.

01:02:52.368 --> 01:02:54.871
(piano music)

01:03:03.346 --> 01:03:07.717
He was just a pleasure to be with.

01:03:13.489 --> 01:03:16.092
(bright music)

01:03:23.032 --> 01:03:24.600
- I'm optimistic about
the future of Scrabble

01:03:24.600 --> 01:03:27.770
because it taps into
something so very basic

01:03:27.770 --> 01:03:28.971
in who we are.

01:03:28.971 --> 01:03:32.308
In its lifetime, Scrabble has
sold over 150 million sets.

01:03:32.308 --> 01:03:34.343
You can play it in thirty languages.

01:03:34.343 --> 01:03:37.346
You can play it everywhere
from Thailand to India,

01:03:37.346 --> 01:03:38.281
to Nigeria.

01:03:39.782 --> 01:03:42.151
Scrabble became this global phenomenon

01:03:42.151 --> 01:03:44.987
played by people in English
who don't speak English.

01:03:44.987 --> 01:03:46.622
We've had world champions

01:03:46.622 --> 01:03:48.391
who don't speak English
as a first language.

01:03:48.391 --> 01:03:50.493
There are national championships in French

01:03:50.493 --> 01:03:52.662
and Spanish and Romanian.

01:03:52.662 --> 01:03:56.399
All of this from this little
unemployed guy in Queens

01:03:56.399 --> 01:03:58.301
who had an idea during the Depression.

01:03:58.301 --> 01:04:00.469
- I dare say there
wouldn't be any Scrabble

01:04:00.469 --> 01:04:02.338
if I hadn't lost my job.

01:04:02.338 --> 01:04:04.907
- I'm grateful that Alfred toiled away

01:04:04.907 --> 01:04:07.610
and perfected the game
that we continue to play

01:04:07.610 --> 01:04:10.446
in basically unaltered
form seventy years later.

01:04:11.447 --> 01:04:15.151
- People today play Scrabble
in many different ways.

01:04:15.151 --> 01:04:17.954
Millions of people are playing
Scrabble on their phone.

01:04:17.954 --> 01:04:19.589
But no matter how you play,

01:04:19.589 --> 01:04:22.992
the essence of Scrabble,
that creation of words,

01:04:22.992 --> 01:04:25.661
finding the solution to that puzzle,

01:04:25.661 --> 01:04:28.164
that's what endures about this game,

01:04:28.164 --> 01:04:29.999
that's what makes it a great game

01:04:29.999 --> 01:04:31.601
and that's why people love it.

01:04:31.601 --> 01:04:33.302
- It's just a wonderful way
for people to be together

01:04:33.302 --> 01:04:35.204
and learning and forming friendships

01:04:35.204 --> 01:04:36.939
and long-lasting friendships.

01:04:36.939 --> 01:04:40.142
It allowed me to help bring
that about in the culture.

01:04:40.142 --> 01:04:42.211
- I played cards and other board games,

01:04:42.211 --> 01:04:44.580
but nothing compares to Scrabble.

01:04:44.580 --> 01:04:47.650
- Scrabble has enriched my
life more than I can say.

01:04:47.650 --> 01:04:49.785
It found me a lot of my closest friends,

01:04:49.785 --> 01:04:51.187
it found me my wife.

01:04:51.187 --> 01:04:52.788
I can't imagine what my life would be

01:04:52.788 --> 01:04:55.892
if I'd not found this
game and this community.

01:04:55.892 --> 01:04:57.593
- Alfred Butts was a genius.

01:04:57.593 --> 01:05:01.264
I think the game is incredibly
designed, it has a beauty.

01:05:01.264 --> 01:05:03.532
I can see he was an architect.

01:05:03.532 --> 01:05:07.670
And in my opinion, he did an
incredible service for mankind.

01:05:08.504 --> 01:05:11.440
- He really hit the nail on the head.

01:05:11.440 --> 01:05:13.976
(bright music)