Poughkeepsie’s Most Famous Resident No One Knows

Every day, millions of people are entertained by an invention created by a Hudson Valley man who has mostly gone unrecognized in his hometown.

A classic board game that has been a staple in American homes for generations would never have been made if it weren't for a smart little kid living on Academy Street.

Scrabble has sold more than 150 million sets worldwide and is played in over 120 countries in more than 30 languages. It’s one of the most successful word games ever created, and it all started in Poughkeepsie.

Scrabble’s Inventor Was Born in Poughkeepsie

Alfred Mosher Butts was born April 13, 1899 and grew up on Academy Street in Poughkeepsie. He attended Poughkeepsie High School before going on to study architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.

Butts never planned to become a game inventor. During the Great Depression, he found himself unemployed and looking for something creative to focus on. That’s when he began developing what would eventually become Scrabble.

Poughkeepsie Man Gives Birth to Board Game Sensation

Butts studied existing games and noticed most fell into three categories: number games like dice, strategy games like chess, and word games like anagrams. He wanted to create something that blended skill with luck.

To make the game balanced, Butts analyzed how often each letter appears in everyday language by studying newspapers, including The New York Times. That research helped him decide how many of each letter should be included in the game, which explains why there are so many E tiles and so few Z tiles.

The game originally went by names like Lexiko and Criss-Cross Words before eventually becoming Scrabble. Early attempts to sell the idea to manufacturers were unsuccessful, but the game finally took off in the late 1940s after entrepreneur James Brunot helped produce and distribute sets.

A Hudson Valley Beginning and Ending

Although Scrabble was developed while Butts was living in Queens, his story both began and ended in the Hudson Valley. After a long life that included one of the most successful board games in history, Butts returned to the region and eventually passed away in Rhinebeck in 1993 at the age of 93.

While you can visit his grave at the Stanford Cemetery in Dutchess County, there is no statue or plaque to let anyone know that the greatest board game inventor was born right here in the Hudson Valley.

In Jackson Heights, where Butts invented Scrabble, there is a unique tribute in the form of a street sign featuring points for each of the letters. So why is there no Poughkeepsie marker?

For someone whose invention became a household name, very few people are even aware that Alfred Mosher Butts is from Poughkeepsie, which is a shame.