Tile script was scratched on the underside of tiles by masons. As can be seen below, individual scratches ran between two of nine positions. There were thirty-six such scratches, twenty-eight of which represented a consonant or vowel (a full left-right scratch or full diagonal represented two shorter scratches and hence two consonants or vowels). The scratches could then be combined to create words, though there was no indication of which scratch should be read first and the meaning of the anagram had to be deduced from context when it was not otherwise plain.
Tile script was also the inspiration of Thermic, an esoteric “heat” script read with bare feet while walking over heated tiles created with more or less iron-dust mixed into their clay.