Wherever you are, you can enjoy a banana, ignoring any envious looks from the passenger opposite 😊 and Bananagrams travels just as well. According to Bananapedia, the family of its devisers said it was “an anagram game that will drive you bananas!”
The game’s based on 144 tiles, each showing a letter of the alphabet, and they’re stored inside – would you ever guess – a banana! To get started you just unzip a banana -1960’s advert, so don’t blame me. Out tumble the tiles, and away you go.
Unlike Scrabble, there’s no board, and players don’t have to wait an eternity for old slowcoach. Everybody’s set to work on their own piles of tiles, building words up & down, or across – all joining another of their words at some point,
a little bit like a crossword puzzle.
There are various points at which players may annoyingly be forced to take extra tiles 😒 or to make costly exchanges from the tiles still left on the table. It goes on until somebody’s able to claim victory by using all their tiles.
There are several variations on the basic game, including a solo option, and there’s a version that makes it more of a party game.
Light – easier to digest than its name suggests.
- minimal setting up
- replayable
- don’t assume it’s a walkover
- need a pretty good vocab
- spelling matters if you’re a stickler for such things
- a fairly gentle game whilst players are thinking
- may become noisier if they make others pick up tiles
â–º Give me a bite – a little one !