a research director at Google, finds it fun because he trusts the creator, Wastl, “to make it worth my time”—in a similar way, Norvig says, to how New York Times crossword puzzlers trust Will Shortz to do right
Butts created a game during the Depression where lettered tiles were assigned points on a crossword puzzle-style grid. Butts came up with names for the game like CrissCross Words and Lexiko before licensing the idea to James Brunot, who called it Scrabble. Sales were fairly abysmal at first...