# Lexiko

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{{Short description|Precursor of board game Scrabble}}
{{More citations needed|date=May 2010}}
{{italic title}}
{{Infobox game
| title         = ''Lexiko''
| subtitle      = 
| image_link    = <!-- the image name and size in the form size -->
| image_caption = <!-- as appropriate--->
| manufacturer  = 
| designer      = [Alfred Mosher Butts](/source/Alfred_Mosher_Butts)
| illustrator   = [Alfred Mosher Butts](/source/Alfred_Mosher_Butts)
| publisher     = 
| date          = 1931
| years         = 1931–1938
| genre         = [Word game](/source/Word_game)
| language      = [English](/source/English_language)
| system        = 
| players       = 
| ages          = <!-- age range -->
| setup_time    = 
| playing_time  = 
| random_chance = 
| skills        = 
| media_type    = 
| web           = 
| footnotes     = 
}}

'''''Lexiko''''' was a [word game](/source/word_game) invented by [Alfred Mosher Butts](/source/Alfred_Mosher_Butts).<ref>[http://scrabblewordfinders.net/scrabble-letters/ History of Scrabble letters] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150918014110/http://scrabblewordfinders.net/scrabble-letters/ |date=2015-09-18 }}, Retrieved November 7, 2013</ref> It was a precursor of ''[Scrabble](/source/Scrabble)''. The name comes from the [Greek](/source/Greek_language) {{Transliteration|grc|lexicos}}, meaning "of or for words".<ref>{{cite web |title=Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, λεξικο^ς |url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dlecikos |website=www.perseus.tufts.edu}}</ref>

''Lexiko'' was played with a set of 100 square cardboard tiles, with the same letter distribution later used by ''Scrabble'' (see [Scrabble letter distributions](/source/Scrabble_letter_distributions)), but no board. Players drew nine tiles at random, and attempted to construct words from them.{{citation needed|date=February 2022}}

==History==
In 1931, Butts wrote a paper entitled "Study of Games." In his paper, he described three categories of games: [board](/source/Board_game), number games using [playing cards](/source/playing_cards) or [dice](/source/dice), 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](/source/chess) and [backgammon](/source/backgammon)), the best letter game readily available was [Anagrams](/source/Anagrams_(game)). Around that time, he was reading "[The Gold-Bug](/source/The_Gold-Bug)" by [Edgar Allan Poe](/source/Edgar_Allan_Poe) and noticed a line containing the [English](/source/English_language) 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](/source/game_design) was rejected by games manufacturers such as [Parker Brothers](/source/Parker_Brothers) and [Milton Bradley](/source/Milton_Bradley_Company), 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](/source/board_game) based on ''Lexiko'', which he called ''Criss-Cross Words'', which was eventually renamed ''[Scrabble](/source/Scrabble)''.<ref>The history of ''Lexiko'' is discussed in ''[Word Freak](/source/Word_Freak)'' by [Stefan Fatsis](/source/Stefan_Fatsis).</ref>

==References==
<references/>

==External links==
*[https://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/scrabble/index.html NPR: history of ''Scrabble'' and ''Lexiko'']
*[http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0901/fatsis.html Excerpt from ''Word Freak'']

{{Scrabble}}

Category:Party games
Category:Scrabble
Category:Word games
Category:Games and sports introduced in 1931

{{Game-stub}}

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Lexiko](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexiko) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexiko?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.