But as a game, Scrabble is remarkable. It carefully balances skill and luck and risk and reward. It exploits the breadth and beauty of the English language. It fosters mind-blowing creativity, heart-stopping tension and computer-stretching quantitative analysis.

Most people playing online or at the kitchen table aren’t aware of Scrabble’s complexity, let alone its tournament culture. Hasbro, obviously, is. The corporate question is whether it has a responsibility to both worlds, casual and competitive — and whether that responsibility extends to times like these, when Hasbro has been laying off workers and focusing on top-selling products.

Corporations from Coca-Cola to the N.F.L. are caretakers of some slice of history. Usually that history is central to the business. To Hasbro, Scrabble isn’t. But it is an enduring piece of Americana, developed in a garden apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens, by an unemployed architect named Alfred Butts who spent years perfecting his game before it swept the country in the 1950s. I have yet to find a parallel for it — that is, a proprietary game with a subculture whose passion and sophistication transcend its ownership.

What’s the value of that to a $4 billion corporation? Is it more or less than the $700,000 or $800,000 a year Hasbro spent on the National Scrabble Association at its peak — before it stopped paying for club and tournament Scrabble in 2008 and slashed the budget for school and casual Scrabble to the point that the association decided to cease operations.

But forget about money. What’s the value of something like Scrabble to the culture at large? Does its owner have an obligation to nurture each side of the game, whether or not it jibes with the prosaic nature of the toy industry or boosts profits? Do history and intellect matter?

I spoke recently with Hasbro’s chief marketing officer, John Frascotti. He said the right things about Scrabble’s past and its competitive side. Hasbro is “committed to spending marketing dollars to promote the Scrabble brand and to promote Scrabble play,” Mr. Frascotti said. He told me he believed the company could do what the Scrabble association did, at least for schools and casual players. “Judge us as we act, not as we say,” he said.

I promised to keep an open mind. But since I started playing competitively and reporting on Scrabble 15 years ago, I’ve shaken hands with a moving walkway of Hasbro executives, all of whom have pledged love for and commitment to the game. And then the cuts came. Hasbro recently withdrew its last, token contribution to the national championship: $15,000 in prize money.