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The game “buttugly” was created as an afterthought.  The original concept was to create a game for the classroom as an aid to help children understand the nature of compound words.  This, apparently, has been a difficult concept for teachers to teach and for early readers to understand.

The original game was call “hodgepodge” and consisted of six decks of cards. Half of the decks were blue words while the other half was red.  How the game was played was essentially the same as buttugly. The students would break up in groups of eight, deal five cards from each deck to each player and begin play.  The first player to rid their hand of cards was the winner.  All words played must be real compound words which could be verified by a dictionary if necessary.

While playing hodgepodge we saw the possibilities of putting two totally non-offensive words together to make a legitimate compound word that was dirty and offensive.  Thus began the creation of the buttugly card game.