During the Great Depression, Poughkeepsie-born architect Alfred Mosher Butts, then living in Jackson Heights, Queens, invented the game Lexiko, now known as Scrabble! He drew inspiration from popular games such as dice, cards, and anagrams, to imagine the game, now enjoyed in 28 languages around the world.
Alfred Mosher Butts, the inventor of Scrabble. Yvonne Hemsey/Getty Images.
Butts at the Fairfax, Vermont Scrabble Factory in 1985. Photo from the Burlington Free Press.
The birthplace of Scrabble. Photo by Matthew D. Britt via Flickr Creative Commons.
Iconic Scrabble tiles. Photo by Jason Powers, via Flickr Creative Commons.
