According to my calendar, today marks the death of Alfred Mosher Butts, the inventor of Scrabble. While unemployed during the Depression, he read the front pages of the New York Times and figured out the distribution of letters, on which he based the scoring criteria.
His wife surprised him by spelling quixotic and racking up 214 points.
He first dubbed it "Lexiko" and then "Criss Cross Words," but no one was interested in mass producing it. He later sold it to James Brunor, who renamed it "Scrabble" from the Dutch word, "schrabben" (to scrape or scratch). Only 532 sets were sold in the first year, but we now can see just how successful the game has been.
It would be interesting if they decided to release a new version of Scrabble with brand new scoring. Might be interesting to see just how the English language has changed since the 1930s. Although, Butts's method probably wasn't as rigorous as it could be.