The Southern Connecticut Scrabble Club is more than just a group of people who play the popular board game – it’s a community which comes to compete, have a good time and connect with other word-loving individuals.
The club was founded about a year and a half ago by Bob Litchenstein and David Lewis.
Lichtenstein, a former member of the Lexington Scrabble Club, had just moved back to Connecticut and was eager to join a local club where he could continue playing the game. He originally sought out the West Hartford Scrabble Club, only to discover it had been disbanded.
So, he decided to try and start his own club. While searching for potential venues to host the club, Lichtenstein met Lewis at the Hamden Chess Academy.
Together, the two founded the Southern Connecticut Scrabble Club, which has since grown in numbers.
The club’s founders, Lewis in particular, showed interest in Scrabble’s origins and how the game has developed throughout the years.
“Scrabble is very unusual among games, because we can actually point to one particular person who invented it,” Lewis said. “[Scrabble is} unlike chess or checkers or mancala or senti or go, which developed over hundreds of years and then sort of spread organically.”
New York architect Alfred M. Butts created the game Lexico in 1938, based on crossword puzzles and anagrams. He created the game as a distraction from the Great Depression and the everyday glum of life. Soon after, the Lexico was renamed Criss Cross Words to hopefully gain more traction.
James Brunot of Newtown, one of the original owners of the game, bought the manufacturing rights to Criss Cross Words in 1948 and redesigned the game into the Scrabble we know and love today. The first Scrabble factory was set up in an abandoned schoolhouse in rural Connecticut, where Brunot and his friends and family manufactured 12 sets per hour.
Scrabble got its big break in 1952 when Macy’s owner Jack I. Straus played it on vacation and soon put in an order to have the game in his stores. Since then the game has taken off. From international competitions to game shows, Scrabble has become a well-known household name, even moving into online play.
Online versions of Scrabble took over in 2005. The first creation was an unauthorized website, Scrabulous, that soon became an extension offered on Facebook. But after facing lawsuits from Hasbro, which makes Scrabble, the game was changed to the name of Lexulous in 2008. Hasbro then officially made Scrabble available once again on Facebook in the same year.
Despite this, both Lichtenstein and Lewis emphasize the importance of playing in person and forming connections face-to-face rather than online.
“People can play Scrabble online, we could certainly do that. But we’d rather meet in person and be with kindred spirits – birds of a feather, as it were,” Lewis said.
As of 2020, the Scrabble GO app has been downloaded more than 10 million times. But even with its online popularity, a physical game of Scrabble is owned by 33% of American households and 53% of households in Great Britain.
“For me, it’s a social game. It’s mentally challenging, it’s fun, but I’ve had no interest in playing online, you know,” Lichtenstein said. “In fact, it’s frustrating to play online because chances are better than 50-50 that the other person’s looking up words.”
“It’s a social outlet. In our day and age, people I think have been missing opportunities to meet in person,” Lewis said.
The club meets twice a month at the Barnes and Noble in North Haven, offering a peaceful and relaxed atmosphere for those who participate.
Beyond the game’s casual appearance, Scrabble is a highly competitive game that requires skill, strategy and a sharp mind.
At the higher level, it is common for players to train for extended periods of time, studying the dictionary to become vocabulary experts.
“If you want to be a serious player, you’ve got to put in some word learning time and learn strategy,” Lichtenstein said. “I waited about a year or two before showing up at the Lexington Mass Club because I said I’m not going to go until I’ve learned all the twos and the threes.”
Lewis also noted the challenges he and other players face when trying to keep track of a dictionary that is constantly being updated.
“One of the complications that we face as Scrabble players, that they don’t face in the chess world, is that the dictionary keeps changing,” Lewis said. “So they add new words, for example, we can now play the word fave. It’s a new word that wasn’t there before.”
The beauty of the Southern Connecticut Scrabble Club, however, is that anyone is welcome to play, regardless of their experience.
There are plenty of opportunities to learn and strengthen one’s skills through friendly competition. When combined with a shared love for Scrabble, it fosters a true feeling of community.
Lichtenstein has witnessed this growth since the club’s beginning and hopes it will increase its numbers in the future.
“It’s fun, it’s challenging,” he said. “You share the thrills and spills of tough draws and good plays.
The Southern Connecticut Scrabble Club is always looking for new word lovers to join its fun games and share its love for the game.
Its next meeting will be on Tuesday, Oct. 22 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Barnes and Nobles located at 470 Universal Drive North in North Haven.