Anagrams

Anagrams (also known as Pirate Scrabble, Anagram, Snatch, Word Making and Taking and Grabscrab) is a tile-based word game that involves rearranging letter tiles to form words.

The game pieces consist of a set of tiles with letters on them. Tiles are turned over one by one, and players form words by combining unused tiles with existing words, their own or others'. The game has never been standardized and there exist a great many varieties of sets and rules. Anagrams is now often played with tiles from another word game, such as Scrabble. Web and mobile app based versions of this game have also been created.

Reputed to have originated as a Victorian word game, Anagrams has appeared in many published versions in the last century.

The first modern version seems to have been the game "Word Making and Taking" by Charles Hammett in 1877. The first version to include the word "Anagrams" in the title seems to be The Game of Letters and Anagrams on Wooden Blocks published by Parker Brothers around 1890. Another game called Anagrams was published in 1934 by the manufacturer Selchow and Righter, who would later publish Scrabble in 1953. Spelling and Anagrams (a set incorporating two distinct games, Spelling and Anagrams) was also published in the 1930s. In 1975, Selchow published the Scrabble Scoring Anagrams version which featured tiles with point values similar to the familiar Scrabble system. Another version was published in the 1960s by the now defunct Transogram. The Embossing Company, formerly Halsam Products Company, also produced a yellow-on-black Eye-Rest set. Many other versions have been produced and used sets can still be found on internet auction and specialty sites. A variation called SWIPE was published by Leslie Scott (the creator of Jenga) in the early 1980s and since 1990, Scott's company, Oxford Games Ltd, has published Anagram, the ingenious game of juggling words. Up For Grabs was published by Tyco in 1995. Portobello Games produces a version under the name Snatch. Prodijeux has been marketing a variant called wordXchange since 2000. One Up! is yet another version, except it adds a "wild" tile, called the Uppity tile, that can be any letter (much like a blank tile in Scrabble). In 2015 Interactive Coconut produced an iOS mobile app variant called Grabble Words.

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