Bananagrams

Bananagrams is a popular and inexpensive game available from places like Target.  It is like Scrabble, in that you try to spell intersecting horizontal and vertical words with plastic tiles.  The main difference is that Bananagrams is fun where is Scrabble is not.

In Bananagrams each player starts with 15-21 random letters upside down, and the rest of the letters are in a pile in the middle of the table.  Someone shouts "start" or some fruit themed word, and the race it on to flip over all your letters, and get them all into words.  The first person to arrange all their tiles into one interlocking structure made up of words shouts "peel", and everybody takes one more letter from the middle.  Then they try to add their new letter to their existing words, rearranging everything if necessary.  Whoever uses up all their tiles shouts "peel" again, and the game goes on like that until there aren't enough tiles left for everybody to take one.  Whoever shouts "peel" then will win the game.  You can also dump bad letters by putting one letter in the middle, and taking three out.

One of the best things about Bananagrams is that there are no turns, you never sit around waiting for others to finish their turns.  There is non-stop hectic action as you try to use up all your tiles faster than everybody else.  I also like simplicity of the rules.  Unlike scrabble, where a Z is worth more points, in Bananagrams a Z is only harder to use.  Plus you can dump it if you want, and place it close to an opponent who isn't paying any attention because she is trying to get the next peel.

The element of luck is there in Bananagrams, but it doesn't seem to drive the game.  Part of that is that you don't really pay attention to anybody else, so you don't really know if they are more or less lucky than you. The time when lucky matters a lot is the last few peels before the end of the game.  If you draw an S and an E, you can probably just add ES to the end of a word like CAN.  If you draw a Z and a G, you will need to do some actual rearrangement of your letters, and probably won't be able to win.    

I highly recommend Bananagrams, its cheap, fast, fun and accesible.  I've played it with my regular gaming group, and it is very popular.  I've also played it at my parent New Years Eve party with 70 year old Filipino laides, and it is still very popular.  Its the best word game I've played, and the best accessible game I've played.  It is more fun than it sounds, and you should check it out even if you don't think you would like it.

Score 10/10

Theme Variant

Normally proper nouns, like names and places, are not allowed in Banangrams.  We will often declare a theme, like "science fiction", and any proper nouns that fit the theme are allowed.  It is a lot harder than you expect to try use words from a specific theme, so we often add a bonus.  If you spell a sci-fi word, like PICARD, you get to pass one letter to the player to your right.  We normally don't penalize players for later taking apart that word, but they can't reuse it.