SCRABBLE SIGN, Jackson Heights

I’ve mentioned it before…it’s a Forgotten NY oldie, but a goodie.

It seems to be the height of redundancy and a complete waste to post two maroon landmark street signs at one corner in Jackson Heights, at 35^th Avenue and 82^nd Street What’s the Department of Transportation up to? One sign shows 35^th Avenue normally, but the other one has small numbers after each letter: “1” after T, A, E, N, U and E, and “4” after the H and V.

It’s all because of Jackson Heights resident Alfred Butts. In the 1940s Butts, an architect by trade, created a new word game combining the features of anagrams and crossword puzzles, calling it “Criss Cross Words,” and shopped it around to game and toy manufacturers without success. Finally, Butts got a boost from Criss Cross Words fans Mr. and Mrs. James Brunot, who decided to manufacture and market the board game themselves. Renting an abandoned schoolhouse in Dodgington, Connecticut, they hand-manufactured the games, stamping out letters on wooden tiles. Word gradually spread about the new game and orders gradually increased; Macy’s placed some orders. The renamed Scrabble®, now distributed by Hasbro, became America’s second most popular board game, second only to Parker Brothers’ Monopoly®. There are professional Scrabble players and Scrabble leagues; Stefan Fatsis’ 2001 book “Word Freak” describes the lives, trials and tribulations of people who know what words have a “q” not followed by a “u”. (Me, I know qi, qat, suq and cinq.)

The Department of Transportation, not usually known for whimsical humor, posted its tribute to Butts during the early 1990s. T, A, E, N, and U carry a one-point value, while H and V are good for four points. In Scrabble, point values go up the rarer the letter in English usage; Q and Z earn ten points.

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5/21/21