The Friends of the Franklin Public Library believe that Debra Hildegard Dolson may have played Scrabble too.
Members of the group will host the annual Hildegard Dolson Memorial Tournament on Saturday, March 18, as part of their effort to get people into the library and show that it can be used for more than books.
This year event organizers chose to feature Scrabble instead of Cribbage which was played at past events.
Entry forms are available at the library or online on the library’s website, www.franklinlibrary.org. For a $15 donation, people may join the friendly competition and have lunch too.
Time and space limits the field to 24 players, so early registration is encouraged.
Games will start at 10:45 a.m. after a short organizational meeting to determine opponents. The competition will end at approximately 4:30 p.m. so prizes can be awarded and clean-up can be completed by closing time at 5 p.m.
Competitors should take their own boards if possible.
The Friends members are donating all the food and supplies so the money raised will be used to benefit the Franklin Public Library, located at 412 12th St., Franklin.
History of Scrabble
The official Scrabble website provided some historical information about the game.
It credited the creation of the game to an out-of-work architect named Alfred Mosher Butts. During the Great Depression in 1933, Butts “entwined the elements of anagrams and the classic crossword puzzle into a scoring word game first called Lexiko,” the website said.
The site said the game was refined in the early 1930s and ‘40s and became known as Criss Cross Words. According to the site, Butts later met James Brunot and together the two men refined the rules and design and came up with the name Scrabble.
The Scrabble brand crossword game was trademarked in 1948.
“In the early 1950s, legend has it, the president of Macy’s discovered the game while on vacation and ordered some for his store. Within a year, the Scrabble game was a ‘must-have’ hit, to the point that games were being rationed to stores around the country,” according to the site.
The rights to the game were purchased in 1986 by Hasbro, the owner of the Milton Bradley Company.
The site said the Scrabble game is found in three of every five American homes and now has many versions.
The tournament’s namesake
Franklin native, writer and humorist Hildegard Dolson (1908-1981) was the author of many books, including “We Shook the Family Tree” — about growing up in Franklin — and “The Great Oildorado” — about the early oil industry in Venango County. Her portrait is prominently displayed at the Franklin Public Library.
Her connections to the actual game of Scrabble, however, are tenuous at best, Friends members said.
Research has not determined whether Dolson ever played Scrabble, but she might have, they added. The original organizer of this annual memorial tournament is also a local history buff.
