Alfred Mosher Butts, an American architect, created the game in 1931 in Jackson Heights, Queens, as a variation on an earlier word game called Lexiko. To set the letter counts and point values, he studied the frequency of letters in sources including The New York Times. He called it Criss-Crosswords and could not sell it to big toy makers. In 1948 James Brunot bought the rights, slightly rearranged the premium squares, simplified the rules, and renamed it Scrabble, a real word meaning to scratch frantically. Selchow and Righter licensed it in 1952 and sold nearly four million sets in 1954.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.