Ruma (from Malay rumah = "house") was created by Margarethe Martha Punga, woman of Professor Franklin Punga at Darmstadt Technical University (Germany). She described her game in the Belgian journal Sphinx for the first time in 1931. The game was also described in 1942 in a book on recreational mathematics which was written by the Belgian Maurice Kraitchik (*1882-1957), at that time assistant professor at the New School of Social Research in New York City (USA). The game was marketed in the USA as Dead Pan in 1956 by Selchow & Righter. Ruma is a predecessor of Pass It On.