The Daily Feather — Rummikub Debate Settled
Meet Ephraim Hertzano, a Romanian who started his career selling toothbrushes and cosmetics. A card player in his free time, he was naturally disappointed when the Communist regime outlawed card-playing after a royal coup toppled the pro-Nazi government of Ion Antonescu in August 1944. Inspired rather than dejected, Hertzano dreamed up a game using tiles in lieu of cards. With two to four players, combining elements of rummy and mahjong, he called it Rummikub, as in rummy played with cubes. Numbered from 1 to 13 in four different colors, there are 104 tiles plus two jokers. After moving his family to Israel after World War II, Hertzano continued developing the game that could be played by the young and old alike and had no ties to language or religion. In a world starved for enjoyable pastimes, it was an instant hit. In the version to which I am addicted, each player draws 14 tiles, ‘comes out’ when they have tiles that sum to 30 – they must be three of a kind and/or add up sequentially. Hertzano, for his part, was able to leave his dental sales days behind to become a professional game developer.
Today, Rummikub is the world’s fourth most popular game. Moreover, there’s a version with 160 tiles that six can play (it’s on order ahead of the family’s annual trek to the beach). Last night, the game was used as a mental diversion, played during the debate that needs not be named. Never a fan of the pomposity required, it allowed for attention to be diverted while the blowhards blew and mental breaks were too painfully obvious to be ignored.
What’s odd was that the subject of jobs was not more of a feature. Yesterday certainly coughed up its fair share of headlines starting with Walgreens announcing it was closing upwards of 2,100 stores, roughly one-quarter of its locations. CEO Tim Wentworth was quick to offer reassurances on relocating employees: “We don’t see this as an employee reduction, we see this as a footprint reduction.” Nonetheless, most closures will be within close proximity to another store. With 240,000 employees, this amounted to the biggest effective layoff announcement of the year.