Regardless of how you pronounce the name Rummy-CUBE, Roomi-CUBE, Rummy –CUB, if you’ve played it you probably like it.

Rummikub has to be my favorite two-player game and I’ll admit it took me a long, LONG time to learn to play it.  Wait…let me rephrase, I got it pretty quickly once I read the directions but back when I was young my sister got a copy for Christmas we never bothered learning to play it.  Why?  It’s filled with numbers and it looked like math was involved and after summers and summers of math workbooks forced upon us from my math teacher mother there was NO WAY I was going to spend a minute of my free time with anything that looked like math was directly involved.

Silly me. It’s not a math a game – it’s a rummy game, hence the name.  But in my defense here, the rummy we played was called Shanghai so I really had no idea what rummy was at the time.

So when I finally got around to learning how to play Rummikub I couldn’t believe what I had been missing!  I am now the proud owner of 2 of the over 50 million copies that have been sold since Ephraim Hertzano started hand making copies back in the 1930s.

According to the Rummikub people it’s the bestselling tile game and the third best-selling family game in the world.  So then why am I even bothering to write a review?  Because if you are one of the people who hasn’t played it maybe because you fell into the “oh my God – it’s got numbers, there must be MATH involved” trap I fell into, I feel it is my duty to inform you otherwise.  You use the tiles you’re given (and the ones you draw) to make straights of the same color or groupings of  matching numbers (not of the same color).  But what makes it so cool is you can rearrange the tiles in the playing area to slide in your own tiles just as long as every tile still is apart of a straight or number grouping.  Oh my gosh, it sounds so easy!  And it is.

If you haven’t played, try it.  If you have and don’t like it, I’d keep that to yourself.  A big percentage of that 50 million people really like it and you don’t want to upset the mob.

Rummikub Stats:
~$11 and up at Target, Toys ‘R Us, Amazon.com and tons of other places
2-4 players, I think 2-3 is best – especially if you’re playing with “thinkers”
20-45 minutes (really depends on the players)
Ages 8 and up