In the early 1980s I invented a paper-and-pencil grid-based game named Word Battle, based on the Milton-Bradley game Battleship. I used this vocabulary game with international students in my reading classes at San Diego State University for many years.

In January 1992 I started work on a version for submission to game agents. In June 1992 I submitted the game to Tom Braunlich of Technical Game Services (TGS). It was accepted for representation (less than 1% of submission are accepted) in July 1992. I was assured that the paper prototype and correspondence established copyright protection.

Renamed Battlewords, the game was first presented to Ron Weingartner, Associate Vice President of Product Acquisition at Milton-Bradley (MB) at the New York trade show in February 1993. No formal plastic prototype was available because TGS did not have the resources to prepare one. As a result, MB got only a videotaped presentation of the paper-and-pencil version of Battlewords. Weingartner said they had a word game out of Europe that was going to be big, so couldn’t commit to another word game.

For the next two years nothing much happened with Battlewords. TGS still planned to make a cardboard prototype but was never able to. At the February 1994 trade show TGS again talked with MB, which was still waiting to see what would happen with the new European word game. In the meantime, no one at MB informed us that the European game closely resembled mine and had the same name.

Oddly enough, I had started receiving comments from Turkish students in my reading classes that there was a game in Turkey called The Admiral Sank that was almost the same as mine. That started me recalling that a few years back a couple of Turkish students had become very excited when they played Battlewords in my class. I started to believe, but have never substantiated, that these students took my idea, modified it, created and sold their version as The Admiral Sank, and then licensed it to Hasbro International, which produced the game as Battle Words (two words, unlike mine) in Europe. This turned out to be the game that Weingartner had been referring to.

Before the February 1995 trade show, I made a prototype out of a converted Battleship plastic game console that TGS submitted to MB. The response was a rejection letter from Weingartner and a copy of the Battle Words catalog copy from Europe.

I still have the plastic prototype, Weingartner’s rejection letter, and the ad copy. Battle Words in Europe never took off and faded into obscurity; I was able to purchase a copy of that game from an English vintage game company. The nautical theme of words on the game’s box cover confirmed my suspicions about the connection between The Admiral Sank and its licensing to Hasbro International to create Battle Words.

Ironically enough, I later met a Turkish student who was a programmer, and we collaborated in creating the Flash version of Battlewords on this site. The game has been sitting “collecting dust” until now; it is my intention to make it into something much more.