5. Alfred Mosher Butts, the inventor of Scrabble, is from Jackson Heights
As the Dust Bowl raged on in the Midwest and the Great Depression worsened, Alfred Mosher Butts, an unemployed architect, compared board games to deduce that an annagrams type game with point-values would capture the attention of individuals. Eventually, the Jackson Heights resident would invite friends over to his apartment during the Great Depression to play what he called Criss-Cross, a game centered around creating words to rack up points. After perfecting the rules, pieces, and setup, Butts took the game to the Community Methodist Church on 35th Avenue to spread the word. In 1938, he filed a patent for the game, which he would eventually call Scrabble.
Decades later, a sign appeared on the corner of 35th Avenue and 81st Street in Jackson Heights that denoted the point values for the letters on the sign. The Landmarks Preservation Commission and the Transportation Department both deny any relation to the sign. Although the sign disappeared in 2008, the residents of Jackson Heights and Councilman Daniel Dromm reinstated the sign in 2011.
