The Billings Gazette from Billings, Montana • 6

1 Gamesters squabble over Scrabble By MICHAEL CORDTS Chicago Sun-Times Alfred M. Butts is a lousy speller who spent his childhood reading fairy tales; He figures there's a connection. "I invented the dern game and what happened is still crazy to me," said Butts, 82 and feisty. "My life turned into a fairy tale of sorts. "And I don't even know why it's called Scrabble, to tell you the truth." He's still mystified by the 50-year-old creation he calls "it" that took the nation's parlors by storm in 1953 after two decades of oblivion.

I rcrf anrf LaDonna Harris: "amicable separation Parting: Fred Harris, a former U.S. senator from Oklahoma who made an unsuccessful bid for the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination, said he and his wife, LaDonna, have agreed to an "amicable separation." Mrs. Harris was Barry Commoner's running mate during his campaign for president in 1980, running on the Citizens' Party ticket. Harris, now a professor of political science at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, said he would teach in Mexico City next spring and summer in an exchange program, returning to UNM in the fall of 1982. Mrs.

Harris, head of Americans for Indian Opportunity, said she will be moving the AIO headquarters from Albuquerque to Washington, D.C., next spring. She said she expects to stay in Washington for a year. 'Unlivable' 1 Jacqueline Onassis testified Wednesday that "relentless stalking" by a photographer had caused her "confusion, fright and desperation." As a result of his "constant surveillance, she said, her summer vacation became "intolerable, almost unlivable." The former first lady, who appeared nervous on the witness stand and at times close to tears, was testifying in federal court in Manhattan in an effort to have the photographer, Ron Galella, declared in contempt for violating a 1975 order-. It requires him to keep at least 25 feet from Mrs. Onassis and 30 feet from her children.

Mrs. Onassis testified that he had violated the order at least three times in recent months. When Galella took the stand, he conceded that he might have inadvertently gotten too close. Friday, Dec. 18, 1981 collected $100,000 and paid Butts $20,000.

"We could've sold 10 million," Bolton said. Selchow Righter, of course, took another look at Scrabble when Brunot asked for help meeting demand. They took over manufacturing and marketing rights in 1954 and paid royalties to Butts and Brunot until buying the game in 1972. But the firm was only interested in the rights for North America. Brunot sold world rights to a British firm, "which, alas, led to much weeping and gnashing of teeth" when Selchow Righter realized the mistake, Nason said.

And, yes, Butts says he grinned all the way to the bank. Did Scrabble make the lousy speller a millionaire? "No and that's the truth," Butts said. "Brunot made out much better than I. The public relations people tell me I should say it allowed me to live Butts understands the millions of families who play his invention for a night of home entertainment or maybe a penny a point. But he is what is known as a "purist" and only sighs at the mention of Joe Edley.

Edley is Mr. Scrabble, the national champion who won the honor by posting a 14-3 record in a tournament sponsored by Selchow Righter in 1980. First prize was $5,000. Edley, 34, of San Francisco, is one of an estimated 14,000 hard-core Scrabble players, many of whom spend hours a day memorizing word lists. Edley took it one step further, taking a part-time job as a security guard so he could memorize words, not definitions, day and night.

"You don't get any points for definitions," said Edley, who credits his championship to deep-breathing exercises, three apples a day and "alpha rays" that he receives when a word comes to mind. I SUPPOSE THERE is a craziness about our passion," said John Ryan, a sometimes truck driver, mailman, security guard, cook and president of Chicago's Scrabble Club. "We just thrive on competition, on getting that big score." For Scrabble buffs, the record high score is 724 recorded by Bill Blevins, 19, of Cleves, Ohio, in a mismatch against 83-year-old Daisy Webb. Readers of Scrabble Players Newspaper, a subsidiary of Selchow Righter, protested that Blevins had bullied Daisy by using many phony words. To play or not to play a phony is making for hot discussion in Scrabble circles.

Edley says it's OK; Butts says they should be ashamed. Challenging phonies is written into the rules, but then Butts has never been much for the rules of his invention. He plays Scrabble with a dictionary, a no-no. "Well, yes, perhaps that is cheating," admits Butts. "You got me.

It is cheating." Much to the inventor's delight, Scrabble players also have their own dictionary, which Edley memorized from "aa," a rough, cindery lava, to "zyzzyva," a tropical weevil. "I'm a poor speller and that dictionary really helps," Butts said. "Like the word I can never remember if it's 'joting' or No one keeps track of the highest point total for a single word, although Butts says his late wife, Nina, may hold the record. She scored 284 points for "quixotic" that ran across two triple-word scores. Scrabble, by the way is a real word.

"I've never played the word, but I think it is some type of farming," said Ryan of Club 51. (Scrabble to scrape, paw or scratch with hands or feet.) ONE OF THE KEY words in Edley's win was a phony because he made a plural out of an adjective," said Joe Houle, editor of the Scrabble newspaper and a vice president of Selchow Righter. "I think 'saltant' means a sitting position on a horse." (Saltant: to jump or dance.) Butts never tires of talking Scrabble, although he is proud of his baseball and cigarette card collections. He also has six prints of his drawings of New York scenes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He's somewhat of a celebrity in Stanfordville, a hamlet outside Poughkeepsie, and for good reason.

He used his royalities to buy his great-great-grandfather's house, built in 1811. He also financed a doctor for the village and designed and paid for the local library so he could keep reading fairy tales. "Oh, boy. Have I been lucky," he said. He receives an occasional letter from a struggling inventor seeking advice, such as the woman who dropped by last week to sell Douglas Bolton of Cadaco Inc.

on her new board game. It's called "Santa Paws." You guessed it. A dog roams the world with a bagful of puppies. "Don't laugh," Butts said. "You may be buying that game next year for your kids." Hollywood, of course, played it with dirty words.

A risque gentleman in Boston was said to have simultaneously played it in three languages. And generations of dogs have made it a diet supplement. Then there was the young Chicago executive who poured wine on his boss until given permission to cash in on it. Pre-Hula Hoop and post-Mah Jong, it prompted toy department fistfights. SCRABBLE IS ALIVE and sticking to tradition solid on the sales charts and the source of much squabbling.

"It" is currently the root of several wordy national controversies and has spawned a do-or-die cult whose chief guru is an apple-eating, meditating, part-time security guard from San Francisco who has a pet rat, believes in psychic healing and has memorized a dictionary. "You say that fellow memorized the words but not the definitions? Gosh, that's ridiculous," Butts said in a telephone interview from his home in Stanfordville, N.Y. "And those tournaments. I wouldn't do that. But then it hasn't made much sense since the start." That came 50 years ago this Christmas when Butts put the finishing touches on the prototype of a board game that revolutionized anagrams by providing a unique scoring system.

It was a very quiet revolution for 22 years. "Nobody knows why, but suddenly it just hit the fan in 1953. We've been grinning ever since," said John Nason, vice president of marketing and advertising for Selchow Righter, the Long Island company that owns Scrabble. Although it doesn't outsell checkers or chess, Selchow Righter contends it has sold more than 1.5 million sets a year, 50 million over all, making Scrabble the best-selling trademark board game in the country. That's right.

Monopoly is a distant second. "That's just not true," stammered a spokeswoman for the owner of Monopoly, Parker Brothers. "Monopoly is the best-selling trademark board game in the world, and that includes the country." INVENTOR BUTTS put the controversy into perspective: "Who cares?" he said. All Butts was trying to do in 1931 was put some bread on the table. He was 32, an architect sidelined by the Depression who decided to invent an adult game based on luck and skill.

He loved anagrams but found them boring without a system of scoring. So he studied the front page of the New York Times for a week, charting the distribution of letters in words and arbitrarily assigning values from 1 to 10. Common letters like scored one point, 10 points. It took luck to draw high-scoring letters, skill to put them into play, and Butts dubbed his game Lexico. Crossword puzzles gave him the idea for adding a game board in 1938 and Lexico was renamed Criss-Cross Words.

That's when Butts decided to make his fortune. "Well, I wrote lots of letters and sent copies of my game to everybody, including Selchow Righter," he said. "They all wanted childish games and rejected it without ever playing it." He used a jigsaw to make 500 sets for his friends and went back to plying his trade with the New York City Housing Authority. One of his friends, who couldn't get the game out of his mind, was James Brunot, former director of Franklin D. Roosevelt's War Relief Control Board.

Brunot struck a deal with Butts in 1948, promising to pay the inventor a small royalty on every sale in return for control of the game. Brunot and his wife manufactured the game in the living room of their home in Newtown, selling 2,251 games in 1949 and losing $450. BRUNOT MADE a few rule changes much to Butts' dismay, picked the name Scrabble out of the air because it had never been copyrighted, and continued to lose money the next two years. "We figured it was a loser," Butts said. But something very strange happened in the fourth quarter of 1952 orders jumped from 16 to 411 a day.

Nobody knows why, although writers at the time credited the "exceptionally active mouths" of the women at Smith College, where the game had been advertised. (USPS 056200) Published daily and Sunday by THE BILLINGS GAZETTE A division of Lee Enterprises. Inc. George Remington Publisher Sonja Craig General Mgr. Richard J.

Wesnick Editor Carl Rexroad Managing Editor Peter D. Fox City Editor Paul Sherry Advertising Dir. Harris Circulation Dir. C.J. Leming Production Mgr.

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Broadway Outside Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota Morning and Sunday Twelve months $180.00 Six months 90.00 Three months 55.00 Morning without Sunday Twelve months. -IV. $130.00 Six months, 77.00 Three months 48.00 Sunday only Twelve months $71.00 Six months Three months $30.00 HOME DELIVERY RATE Yellowstone and surrounding counties; $6 50 per month: Motor Rts $7.00 per month. All other Counties $7 25 per month. The Gazette is a member oi the Audit Bureau of Circulation.

Member of Associated Press The Associated Press is exclusively entitled to use for publication of dispatches credited to it or not otherwise credited to this paper and also local news published herein. Copyright 1981. The Billings Gazette. All rights reserved. Reproduction, reuse or transmittal in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or an informational storage and retrieval system is prohibited without permission in writing from The Billings Gazette.

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Saturdays. Sundays and Holidays before 10 a.m. DEADLINE TO START OR STOP THE GAZETTE: 12 noon. Monday thru Friday for next morning delivery. Any request after NOON FRIDAY will not be effective until Tuesday morning MAIL SUBSCRIPTION RATES PAYABLE IN ADVANCE Yellowstone County Only: Morning and Sunday Twelve months $85.00 Six months $45.00 Three months $28.00 Morning without Sunday Twelve months $00.00 Six months $40.00 Three months $23.00 Sunday Only Twelve months $40.00 Six months $23.00 Three months $14.00 Outside Yellowstone County and No.

Dakota Morning and Sunday Twelve months $110.00 Six months 65.00 Three months 40.00 Morning without Sunday Twelve months $90.00 Six months $52.00 Three months $32.00 Sunday only Twelve months $52.00 Six months $32.00 Three months $20.00 Flooded with orders, Brunot set up shop in an abandoned schoolhouse, hired 35 employees and turned out 6,000 sets a week. It was just enough to make the nation, in the throes of "parlormania," scream for more. Enter Douglas Bolton, a young executive with the old Cadaco-Ellis Co. of Chicago, a manufacturer of cardboard products, including games. "You didn't need to be a genius to recognize Scrabble was catching on," said Bolton, now president of Cadaco in Chicago.

"People were waiting in line, yelling and screaming. "But my boss, Eleanor Ellis, was stubborn. She said it was just another anagram game and wouldn't give me permission to pursue it. So Bolton did what any up-and-coming young executive would do: He poured several bottles of wine one night in 1953, got his boss into a game of Scrabble, and made that phone call to Brunot. Bolton convinced Brunot that his back orders were creating ill will, that demand would die if the supply wasn't there.

Brunot, awakened in the middle of the night, agreed. CADACO-ELLIS SOLD 1 million copies of Scrabble in the first 11 months of 1954, grossing $900,000. Brunot TU LOG Sid Marty Kroffl present AVERY SPECIAL Friday, Dec. 18 Schedule Subject To Change Without Notice Straight 8 3:00 One Lite to Live 4:00 Hour Magazine 5:00 ABC World News Tonight 5:30 Straight 8 Newsservice 6:00 Family Feud 6:30 Barney Miller 7:00 Benson 7:30 Bosom Buddies 8:00 Darkroom 9:00 Strike Force 10:00 Straight 8 Newsservice 10:30 Fridays 12:00 Nightline 6:30 Country Day 7:00 Good Morning America 7:25 Farm Ranch News 7:30 Good Morning America 6:25 Straight 8 Newsservice 8:30 Good Morning America 9 00 Love Boat 10:00 Donahue 11:00 All My Children 12:00 Straight 8 Newsservice 12:30 Ryan's Hope 1:00 General Hospital 2:00 The Edge of Night 2:30 Family Feud li i Coming Saturday, Dec. 19th Children 's jh hop ping JkfL A I Day- Dec.

1 9 lh I with special ''JPtefZ: I Children's teg I Shopping Hours ILpyjQ KTVQ-2 Children's Programming TBA The Price Is Right NBC Nightly News MTN News CBS Evening News M'A-S'K Oral Roberts Christmas Special Dallas Falcon Crest MTN News Tonight Show SCTV Network 90 Weather Report 3:30 4:00 5:00 5:30 6:00 630 7:00 8:00 9:00 1000 10:30 11:30 1:00 6:30 7:00 7:25 7:30 8:25 8:30 9:00 9:30 10:00 10:30 11:30 12:30 1:00 2:00 3:00 Wakeup' With Captain Kangaroo The Today Show Farm Ranch Report Today Show Resumes Morning Montana News Today Show Resumes Today In Montana One Day At A Time Alice The Young a Restless As The World Turns Search For Tomorrow The Guiding Light Another World Up To The Minute RICHARDROBERTS fl SISTERS mf. T.G.SHEPPARD i TEDDYPENDERGRASS and S358f5BWtlCjKr featuring THE KROFFT THE ORU PUPPETS SINGERS Tonight at 7:00 p.m. UIM LS CJ I It VI rat i. a l-l-Hvl Featuring giftsfor Silver Dollars, Sterling Silverware', Silver Bullion, Gold Bullion, Old Dental Gold, Gold Watches, Class Rings. (We will pay more) Treasure State Silver Gold (Mart 10 Mr.

OomrfJ 924 Grand 248-8446 10.00 and under Free G'ft Wrap lor Kids Prices good thru Sunday See complete listing in Saturday's Gazette. KOUS-4 Santa's Letter to Parents: Santa invites you to have coffee and a donut while your children shop for you. Santa's helpers will assist your children in shopping. If you have preferences on item's or suggestions please send a list with sizes and colors. 12:30 2:00 300 4:00 500 530 600 7:00 10:00 Afternoon Matinee Texas Days of Our Lives Sesame Street The Flintstone Lone Ranger Star Trek Holiday Bowl (Football) Independent Network Sign On Morning Stretch Channel 4 AG Report Underdog Rocky His Friends Jim Bafcker The Regis Philbin Show Block Busters Wheel ot Fortune Battiestars Password Plus The Doctor Independent Network 6 29 6:30 7:00 7:08 7:33 8:00 too 9:30 10:00 10:30 11:00 11:30 100 Hey Kids: Have milk and cookies with Santa Claus after you do your shopping.

Time 10:00 to 10:30 a.m. Also register to win one 12-Speed Bicycle given away. Must be 16 years of age or under to win. Nothing to buy. 10 30 McClaln'iLew 11:30 TBA 130 Sign Off.