Alfred M. Butts, inventor of the board game ‘Scrabble’ is photographed August 25, 1981, in New York City. (Photo by Yvonne Hemsey/Getty Images)
6. A plan to design a board game based on the principles of the crossword puzzle was devised by New York architect Alfred Mosher Butts in the 1930s when he found himself unemployed. That game turned out to be another beloved pastime we all know and love, Scrabble, released in 1938. Butts was also an amateur artist. Six of his drawings were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A resident of Jackson Heights, NY, Butts is memorialized in the game’s importance with a street sign located at 35th Avenue and 81st Street stylized using letters with their values in Scrabble as a subscript