From: benlizro@ihug.co.nz   
      
   Tony Cooper on a.u.e. beat me to this.   
   It's the birthday of Alfred Mosher Butts (1899-1993), an American   
   architect who loved word games, and figured out how to make one that was   
   intensely competitive -- give points for letters!   
   "Scrabble" (the name) was trademarked by the Hasbro company in 1948.   
      
   The letter values and numbers of tiles for each letter were based on   
   frequencies on the front page of the New York Times.   
   BUT there were only four S's (less than you would expect), since "to   
   have more would weaken the game by allowing too many plural noun and   
   third-person verb forms." (Crystal)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)