Jump to the tiles

The games it came from

Updated September 4, 2026 · 2 min read

No, this was not the first game built on fast crossword grids. The mechanic comes directly from Take Two, an older Scrabble variant that works the same way. Abraham Nathanson adapted that structure in 2005 to remove the slow turns of standard board play.

The short version

  • Check the ancestor game Take Two if you want to trace where the mechanics started.
  • Remember that letter scores from Scrabble do not exist here.
  • Rebuild your crossword grid freely whenever new tiles fail to fit your current layout.
  • Look up older related titles like Dabble, Perquackey, and Syzygy to see how word races evolved.

The direct idea came from Take Two. That older variant shared the core rule of assembling private grids simultaneously. Other related speed and anagram titles sit on the same family tree, including Anagrams, Dabble, Perquackey, Quiddler, Syzygy from 1997, and Double Quick from 1999.

The family tree

Take Two, an older Scrabble variant that works the same way.

Cousins worth knowing: Anagrams, Dabble, Perquackey, Quiddler, Syzygy (1997), Double Quick (1999).

Nathanson began work on the game in 2005 at age 76 after growing restless during a slow match of Scrabble with his grandson. He told the Boston Globe that he wanted an anagrams game fast enough to drive someone bananas. His former wife created the banana pouch, and the game reached the London Toy Fair in January 2006.

Standard Scrabble shares the basic letter pool concept and the interlocking crossword grid. The differences define the race: there is no board, there are no turns, and letters carry no point values. Players aim to place every tile held, rebuilding their entire grid when a layout runs out of open spaces.

The mistake to avoid

The mistake is to assume this was an entirely novel ruleset created from scratch in 2005. Take Two had already established the exact same core mechanics years before Nathanson designed this version with his family.

Questions that keep coming up

Who invented the game?

Abraham Nathanson created it in 2005 in Rhode Island after playing Scrabble with his grandson.

Which older game used this mechanic first?

Take Two is the older Scrabble variant that works the same way and served as the direct ancestor.

When did the game launch publicly?

It debuted at the London Toy Fair in January 2006, after an initial fifty hand-sold copies.