Qwirkle is a tile-based game for two to four players, designed by Susan McKinley Ross and published by MindWare in 2006.

Each tile is painted with one of six shapes (clover, four-point star, eight-point star, square, circle and diamond) in one of six colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple); there are three examples of each of the 36 tile color and shape combinations.

All players declare the largest number of tiles of their initial set in one shape or one color, not including duplicates.

For example: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple circle tiles placed in a single line.

[3] At the end of the game, once there are no more tiles to be drawn to replenish one's hand, the first person to play all of their tiles gains an extra six point bonus, at which point the game ends, and the player who has the highest score wins.

According to Ross, she conceived Qwirkle while watching two friends playing Scrabble and realizing how her favorite part of that game is when words are spelled in two different directions.

After a few days, she had simplified her idea to use abstract shapes and colors and added the six-component bonus, calling the concept Abstrackle when she pitched it to MindWare, who gave it the final name.

[4] Qwirkle gained internet fame after review copies were sent to industry websites, including to Scott Alden, who operated BoardGameGeek and W. Eric Martin, who ran Boardgame News.

Martin brought the game with him on a trip to Berlin and played it with game designers there, including Thorsten Gimmler, a product manager at Schmidt Spiele, who went on to contact MindWare directly, asking for the rights for a German release.