Gnus Nix Zax--Tut

RECREATION Gnus Nix ZaxTut In the dusk of many summer evenings, for the quiet time when television cloys and the children scuttle in chase of the Good Humor man, an ever-growing slice of the U.S. public has found a new diversion. Its name: Scrabble. Its components: a board with 225 squares, 100 small wooden counters bearing letters of the alphabet, two to four players, ability to spell (or a handy dictionary) and a few ounces of competitive spirit.

The emergence of Scrabble has been volcanic and unexplained. The game began to grow into a national institution last year, when shipments shot from 1,436 sets in the first quarter to 37,000 during the last. Devotees quickly carried their word-of-mouth advertising through the U.S., from the first coteries in New York and the North Side of Chicago. Scrabble clubs have convened all over the country, and potential buyers of sets (cost: $3 apiece) solemnly put their names on long waiting lists. Hostesses serve a Scrabble board along with the after-dinner coffee, and shiny markers with A1 or Z10 inscribed are popping up on rural porches and in transcontinental trains.

A Rigid Tongue. What is Scrabble? It is a game, its defenders say, that combines the cerebrations of anagrams and crosswords with the competitive joys of such older indoor sports as Monopoly and Parcheesi. A player gets seven counters in the draw, each with a letter and a number. The numbers relate to the letters' frequency of use. The five vowels count only one point each, while "Z" counts ten. A player moves by spelling out a word on the board, and his score is the numerical value of the counters plus the value of any premium squares on the board, e.g., hitting a blue square can double or triple the value of the letter used.

The next player must build another word on the original, but only in such a way that every combinaton of adjoining letters which he makes forms some word. Short, recondite words like gnus and zax-(see diagram) have a habit of appearing.

Scrabble starts easily, but by the time the board is well covered, the addition of one letter usually involves trying to form two well-nigh impossible words. It is then that dictionaries are consulted and frustrated word-coiners denounce the rigidity of the English tongue.

How It Started. Scrabble was invented in 1933 by a New York architect named Alfred M. Butts, a man who has never enjoyed the game as fully as others because he is an indifferent speller. Butts and his wife played the game through the '30s and '40s, and made some 500 sets for their friends and the odd purchaser, but they never put it on the market. In 1948 a social worker named James Brunot took it over and invented the name "Scrabble" (dictionary meaning: "to scrape, paw or scratch with the hands or feet"). He and his wife started making the games themselves in a small workshop at Newtown, Conn. Six months ago, unable to keep up with the burgeoning demand, they licensed a game-manufacturing company, Selchow & Righter, to bring out Scrabble sets on a mass-production basis.

*But not recondite to accomplished Scrabblers. Gnus are African antelopes, nix is accepted dictionary slang for "nothing" or "I don't allow," a zax is a sharp-pointed tool used in roofing, tut is a mild chiding exclamation.

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