Rummikub
It's from 1950, before you were born.
- Maker
- Lemada Light Industries
- Type
- Tile game
- Debuted
- 1950
- Note
- Created in Romania, popularized in Israel
As an Amazon Associate, OlderThan earns from qualifying purchases.
About
As of 2026, it's 76 years old.
Rummikub was devised around 1950 by Ephraim Hertzano, a Romanian-born Jewish man who hand-made the first sets and sold them door to door in Israel after card games were restricted. A blend of rummy and mahjong played with numbered tiles, it became a runaway hit and eventually a best-seller across the world.
The game's joy is the rearranging: on your turn you can break apart and reshuffle every set on the table to offload your own tiles, turning a tidy board into a frantic group puzzle. It's the rare game that's both relaxing and quietly cutthroat.
Tile-clacking, set-shuffling, and globally beloved, Rummikub is the door-to-door creation that turned numbered tiles into a multi-generational family staple.
