I am a certified Scrabble Club Director and I think that this game does what Scrabble is so good at doing without the need to know words. At it's core Scrabble is a game of logic and pattern recognition and those are the two crucial elements of Qwirkle. In this game you maximize your points by scoring a row of 6 same shapes of different colors or 6 different shapes of the same color. I play this game with my nephews who love it. The playing pieces are sturdy wooden blocks so the game will stand up to a lot and it is very easy to learn and to teach.