Happy National Scrabble Day

For all you board game fanatics and family game night players, Happy National Scrabble day! The wildly popular word game was invented in 1933 as a distraction to American's going through the Great Depression. The dictionary is constantly changing and Scrabble has followed suit for years, updating their game dictionary and board styles.

What makes National Scrabble Day special for the Hudson Valley is it's local origins. Scrabble creator Alfred Mosher Butts was born in Poughkeepsie on today's date, April 13, in 1899. Alfred was an unemployed architect and in his spare time would analyze and study classic games being played at the time like cards and dice. He then broke them down into popularity and different categories. Alfred stated that there was one thing holding back word games from popularity "there was no score."

Alfred tried to sell the game under different names such as LEXIKO and Criss Cross Words. After a few game companies turned down Butts, he joined forces with game entrepreneur James Brunot and Scrabble was born.

My family plays Scrabble every summer on vacation. It was a tradition that my Grandma instilled into our lives and I couldn't love it more. I still play it to this day, going as far as downloading the Scrabble app...and playing it every day. What's your favorite board game?

Happy National Scrabble Day!