National Scrabble Day: 'Spellebrate" America's popular word nerd game

If you are a lover of words and are up for a challenge, it may just be your l-u-c-k-y day! April 13 is National Scrabble Day, an annual holiday that ‘spellebrates’ one of America's most popular board games - Scrabble.

National Scrabble Day celebrates the Father of Scrabble, who was born on April 13, 1899. Alfred Mosher Butts invented the game back in 1938. Butts, an unemployed architect at the time, invented the game during the Great Depression. He wanted to combine crossword puzzles and anagrams with an element of chance.

The very first boards and tiled letters were actually drawn by hand. Originally called Lexiko and Criss-Cross Words, the name was eventually changed to SCRABBLE. And believe it or not, it took awhile for the game to take off. Today, Scrabble is available in many languages and in Braille and can also be played online. Butts passed away on April 4, 1993. He was 93 years old.

Scrabble is not only fun to play and educational, being a "word nerd" is good for your brain! Some believe the game can help players learn new words and improve math, dictionary and thinking skills.

Scrabble icon? How do you spell F-U-N?