''Lexiko'' was a

word game Word games (also called word game puzzles or word search games) are spoken, board, or video games often designed to test ability with language or to explore its properties. Word games are generally used as a source of entertainment, but can add ...

invented by

Alfred Mosher Butts Alfred Mosher Butts (April 13, 1899 – April 4, 1993) was an American architect, famous for inventing the board game ''Scrabble'' in 1938. Personal life Alfred Mosher Butts was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, on April 13, 1899, to Allison B ...

. It was a precursor of ''

Scrabble ''Scrabble'' is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, read left t ...

''. The name comes from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

, meaning "of or for words". ''Lexiko'' was played with a set of 100 square cardboard tiles, with the same letter distribution later used by ''Scrabble'' (see

Scrabble letter distributions Editions of the word board game Scrabble in different languages have differing letter distributions of the tiles, because the frequency of each letter of the alphabet is different for every language. As a general rule, the rarer the letter, t ...

), but no board. Players drew nine tiles at random, and attempted to construct words from them.

History

In 1931, Butts wrote a paper entitled "Study of Games." In his paper, he described three categories of games:

board Board or Boards may refer to: Flat surface * Lumber, or other rigid material, milled or sawn flat ** Plank (wood) ** Cutting board ** Sounding board, of a musical instrument * Cardboard (paper product) * Paperboard * Fiberboard ** Hardboard, a ty ...

, number games using

playing cards A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front (face) and back of each card has a fi ...

dice Dice (singular die or dice) are small, throwable objects with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. They are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, role-playing g ...

, and letter games (or games that fell into more than one). He noted that, although the most popular games were of the first two (e.g.,

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

and

backgammon Backgammon is a two-player board game played with counters and dice on tables boards. It is the most widespread Western member of the large family of tables games, whose ancestors date back nearly 5,000 years to the regions of Mesopotamia and Pe ...

), the best letter game readily available was

Anagrams An anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of a different word or phrase, typically using all the original letters exactly once. For example, the word ''anagram'' itself can be rearranged into ''nag a ram'', also the word ...

. Around that time, he was reading "

The Gold-Bug "The Gold-Bug" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe published in 1843. The plot follows William Legrand, who was bitten by a gold-colored bug. His servant Jupiter fears that Legrand is going insane and goes to Legrand's friend, an ...

" by

Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is wide ...

and noticed a line containing the

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

letter distribution. This gave him an epiphany: Anagrams would be more fun if the most common letters in English were more common in the game. He carefully analyzed letter frequencies in newspapers and other printed works to determine the ideal letter distribution for the game. With a few other changes, he named his project ''Lexiko''. The

game design Game design is the art of applying design and aesthetics to create a game for entertainment or for educational, exercise, or experimental purposes. Increasingly, elements and principles of game design are also applied to other interactions, in ...

was rejected by games manufacturers such as

Parker Brothers Parker Brothers (known by Parker outside of North America) was an American toy and game manufacturer which in 1991 became a brand of Hasbro. More than 1,800 games were published under the Parker Brothers name since 1883. Among its products wer ...

and

Milton Bradley Milton Bradley (November 8, 1836 – May 30, 1911) was an American business magnate, game pioneer and publisher, credited by many with launching the board game industry, with his eponymous enterprise, which was purchased by Hasbro in 1984, and ...

, but Butts was able to sell copies on his own, though not enough to recoup his development expenses. In 1938, he began work on a

board game Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well. Many board games feature a comp ...

based on ''Lexiko'', which he called ''Criss-Cross Words'', which was eventually renamed ''

''.The history of ''Lexiko'' is discussed in ''

Word Freak ''Word Freak'' is a non-fiction narrative by Stefan Fatsis published in 2001 (). The book is subtitled ''Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive SCRABBLE Players''. Fatsis, a sports reporter for ''The Wall Street ...

'' by Stefan Fatsis.

References

External links

NPR: history of ''Scrabble'' and ''Lexiko''
Party games Scrabble Word games Games and sports introduced in 1931 {{Game-stub