Welcome to Part 2 of the 2 Part Holiday Game Recap!

Another awesome game I had played before but only picked up over the holiday is Bananagrams. I was first introduced to it by my cousin and his (then) fiancee. They loved it so much they gave it as gifts to all their wedding party.

A fairly new game, Bananagrams came out in 2006, and it’s usually billed as “Scrabble without the board.” That is a fairly accurate description, however there is one other large, very large, difference between Bananagrams and Scrabble. Bananagrams is real-time, where as Scrabble is turn based.

What does that mean exactly? Well, in Scrabble, you’re using letters to build a cross-word like structure on a single board, taking turns with the other players to place words. In Bananagrams, you each have your own crossword, that you can rearrange at any time and build as fast as you can.

Let’s go into more detail. All players take a number of letters when the game starts, and the remaining letters are left in the center. You all start making your crosswords at the same time. When you’ve used up all your letters, you shout “Peel!” and you take another letter from the center, and everyone else *must* also take a letter. Then, when you’ve assimilated that letter, you shout “Peel!” again, and the process continues. When there aren’t enough letters left in the middle for everyone to take one, instead of shouting “Peel!” you shout “Bananas!” and you win.

If you are ever stuck with a letter you don’t want, like a Q with no U or a Z or something, you can shout “Dump!” and exchange the troublesome letter, face down, for three new letters. The game is interesting because you’ll get someone on a roll, whose built a nice robust crossword, and then they can find easy places to put the next few peels they get, they’re on a roll. Everyone else is unhappy about the amount of letters they have to take, but then the peeler hits a J or an X or something and is stymied. Meanwhile, the extra letters actually helped someone else, and they complete their crossword and shout “Peel!” themselves.

The pacing is really good, because in the beginning, you have a whole lot of letters and you build words quickly. However, later in the game, you become hesitant to destroy what you’ve already created, so you sit there and try to work those new couple letters into the existing structure in vain. What you should really do is consider reworking or maybe even starting over, concentrating on building longer words that will support smaller quicker words later on.

An amazingly simple and versatile game, Bananagrams is quick to learn, and scales from 2 players to 8 players easily. The most I played with was 11, and that was stretching it. I feel 3-7 is the sweet spot. The “hands” tend to go pretty quickly if you have more people and the game feels very different when you play with 3 versus when you play with 7. It’s really quite enjoyable. Plus, the game comes in a fun cloth banana package, so it’s got that going for it too.

Til next time, have fun out there!

Game Info
Name: Bananagrams
Ages: 7+
Players: 1-8
Playing time: 15 minutes
Price: $15
Designer: Abe and Rena Nathanson
Publisher: Bananagrams / Kosmos
First Published: 2006

Links: Bananagrams

Also — have you just played a cool game, or heard about a neat game?
Tell me about it! Email Shawn at greenfieldgamenight AT gmail DOT com. (Replace AT and DOT with their symbols.)