Alfred Mosher Butts, (b. 13 April 1899 in Poughkeepsie, New York; d. 4 April 1993 in Rhinebeck, New York), was an architect and inventor of the board game "Scrabble".
He received his degree in architecture in 1924 from the University of Pennsylvania. When he was unemployed from 1931 to 1935 during the Great Depression, Butts invented what he hoped would be a marketable adult game based on skill, strategy, and chance.
Using 100 anagram letter tiles, four wooden mah-jongg racks, and a cribbage board to keep score, he tinkered with combining anagram and crossword puzzle concepts, naming it at various times, “Lexico,” “It,” and “Criss-Cross Words.” By analyzing the number of times that letters of the alphabet appeared on the front page of the New York Times, Butts determined the proportion of individual letters for the game: one Z but twelve E’s, and so forth. He weighed the worth of each letter according to its frequency: vowels received one point, Q’s and X’s, ten.
One-third of USA households own a Scrabble game and roughly 100 million Scrabble sets have been sold worldwide, in many languages including Russian, Arabic, French, Dutch, Spanish, and Italian, and also in magnetic, Braille, and computerized versions. Deluxe editions in 1998 incorporated a bag for letters, a turntable, and a timer.
If you want to read a lot more about Scrabble, go here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrabble
Make room burritos, 'cause there's a new contender in town, and they're going by the name of Tex-Mex Hand Pies! These creamy hand pies are stuffed full of Tex-Mex favorites like salsa, chicken and lots of creamy cheese. You're going to wish you had more hands.
- 1/2 cup cream cheese, softened
- 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
- 1/2 teaspoon cumin
- 1/2 cup salsa
- 1/2 cup corn
- 1 (13.8-ounce) can refrigerated pizza crust
- 1 1/2 cups shredded cooked chicken breast
- 1/2 cup shredded Mexican cheese blend
- Preheat oven to 425º. Coat 2 baking sheets with cooking spray.
- In a small bowl, combine cream cheese, chili powder, and cumin; mix well and set aside. In another small bowl, combine salsa and corn.
- Unroll dough onto lightly floured cutting board and cut into 6 equal squares.
- Evenly spread cream cheese mixture onto each square, leaving a 1/2-inch border. Top 1/2 of each piece of dough evenly with chicken, salsa mixture, and cheese, then fold each into a triangle. Using a fork, press edges to seal. Place on baking sheets.
- Bake 12 to 14 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve warm.
- Supermarkets offer scrapple throughout the regions in both refrigerated and frozen cases.
- Home recipes for beef, chicken and turkey scrapple are available.
- Scrapple is sometimes deep-fried or broiled instead of pan-frying.
- Scrapple is typically eaten as a breakfast side dish.
- Condiments are sometimes served with scrapple, some of which include apple butter, ketchup, jelly, maple syrup, honey, horseradish or mustard.
