1920s?]. Consisting of one lidded card box 115 x 160m, containing within four separate lidded boxes 75 x 55mm; lacking one blank blue tile, but otherwise complete, white, pink and yellow boxes containing a set of 90 coloured lettered squares (of which five are blank in each set, although as noted only four blue blank tiles); upper lid of each with printed text giving the numbers of individual letters; sets generally bright and clean, with a block of colour on each added in pen to indicate set of cards; some light soiling to boxes; retaining original green cloth ‘caller’s bag’ usually missing; with a folded set of printed rules (though torn in half but without any loss or interruption of text and still usable); rules with some pencil markings; in the original white box, upper lid printed, box lid rather dust-soiled and scuffed, worn along joints and edges, and with later sellotape repairs around the edge; still a good example of a scarce game. An appealing game, similar in vein to scrabble, and we believe an early issue, unusually retaining the original cloth callers bag and including a set of rules. The game consists of a box containing four separate boxes, each of which contains 85 small square cards with letters of the alphabet printed on both sides, together with a further 5 blank cards ‘to replace lost letters’ (though the present set lacks one blue blank tile). The four sets are printed in different colours: white, blue, pink and yellow.
‘The object of the game is to form as many and as long words as possible out of each of the sets of letters supplied... each set contains 85 letters, the proportional quantities of each letter being the same as used by printers. Each set is kept in a small box or bag, with a larger bag for the “Caller”’. Each player takes a set, except for the “Caller”, who keeps his set in a bag ‘from which he draws them one by one at random’. As each letter is called, the player takes the corresponding letter from his set, and places them ‘in not more than six vertical or horizontal columns, endeavouring to arrange them so as to form complete words, reading vertically downwards or horizontally across’.
According to the main lid, the game was ‘invented by the late Alexander Millar’, but as the instruction leaf reveals, the marketing and distribution of the game appears to have been undertaken by two sisters. The printed note states that the game could only be obtained from ‘Miss O. H. Drury’ of Farnagh, York Road, Kingstown, Dublin’. Previous sets handled suggested that a ‘Miss M.I. Drury’ was also involved in this entrepreneurial enterprise. A change in the price of the game has also been noted in ink - the original price ‘Price 1/6 per set. Postage 1 set 3d., 2 sets 5d., etc.’ now changed to ‘1/8 per set, and increased to 4d and 5d respectively’. The price of the sets appears to have changed over time, with the dispatch address also changing. The games seems to have proved relatively popular, with variant and presumably later issues identified including a printed note on the box lid of Miss M. I. Drury’s involvement. Only the Ballam collection set appears to retain the original callers’ bag (in that case blue).