Sunday, 26 October 2014

B-A-N-A-N-A-grams

Bananagrams! (Yes I've gone from ancient games to those played by small children) It's like a free board Scrabble game that my girlfriend and I have started playing together. She loves it and if she's got her larger purse with her there's a good chance that it’s in there somewhere. 

You play Bananagrams on a cleared table top, with lots of space, and use the letters you pick up to create words. The words have to be connected and branch off from each other (like Scrabble). You start with 21 tiles (in a two player game) and once you use all those letters to form interconnected words you say "peel", all other players, including yourself, must pick up a new tile. When there are no more tiles on the tree you say "split" where you would have said "peel" and you are declared the winner. I should mention that you only play with your letters and the words you've laid down in front of you; there are no adding words to other people's boards.


If you are stumped with the letters you are holding you can trade in one of your tiles for three from the tree. Another option to get out of a jam is to rearrange your board. You can move any of your words around, add or remove letters/words; you could even restart your entire word arrangement if you wanted to (unlike Scrabble). 



Like Scrabble you cannot use proper nouns as words (names, places etc.) or acronyms (I'm not sure about this one but the lady is sure that they aren't allowed). There is no scoring and even a person who is struggling at the beginning can get their words in order and call "peel" to find that there aren't any more letters and they have in fact just won the game.

It's a fun, light game and takes between 5-15 minutes to play. It would make a really funny drinking game, especially as the words get worse and worse. Up to now we've enjoyed it sober and have started to get more competitive. (And yes, she's winning)

Score Board
Her              
Me
llll
lll


I'm pretty sure it's a little kid's learning tool, but who cares? It's quick, easy, portable, and fun. It's also cheap, I saw it online for $12, it's definitely worth it if you're a Scrabble fan. 


Try it and enjoy,
                               M.

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