Scrabble: It is a board game, where two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a gameboard which is divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words which, in crossword fashion, flow left to right in rows or downwards in columns and be defined in a standard dictionary.

A scrabble board

Scrabble was invented in 1931, by Alfred Mosher Butts, an architect at Poughkeepsie in New York State, USA.” Unemployed at the time, Butts was keen on creating a combination of three pastimes that were popular — board games, crosswords and number games. To understand letter distribution, Butts studied the front page of The New York Times and calculated each alphabet’s frequency.

Alfred Mosher Butts originally called his invention, the 'Lexiko', but later changed it to 'Cris Cross Words'. Entrepreneur and game lover James Brunot renamed it 'Scrabble' in 1948 after the Dutch word 'Schrabben', which meant to scrape or scratch after buying the rights from Butts. By 1952, the game had gained considerable popularity since that time with over one hundred and fifty million sets being sold worldwide till now.

Pachisi: This cross and circle board game, which originated in ancient India where it is believed to be created perhaps as early as 500 AD, is called the Royal Game of India. This is because royalty used servants of the royal household adorned in colored costumes as game pieces on large outdoor boards. Such a court is preserved at the Fatehpur Sikri, where Emperor Akbar is said to have played the game in this fashion.