Bananagrams!

If you’re anything like me, you love Scrabble, but quickly become impatient waiting for other players to take their turns. The combined comtemplation and low level of action oftentimes feels like a long and boring game of chess.

Which is exactly why I love the game Bananagrams so much. It's all the things you love about Scrabble, without the hassles. Bananagrams is a fast-paced anagram game, very similar to Scrabble, but without the waiting, board, paper or pencils. Bananagrams is continually satisfying and action-packed, as players create and rearrange words from letter tiles the entire game. It also travels well in it’s handy banana case. And I love the banana terminology featured in the game.

The game contains 144 lettered tiles, which are initially fliped face down into a “bunch.” Players then draw a certain number of tiles, depending on the number of players in the game. For 2-4 players, it’s 21 tiles each. As soon as the players have drawn their tiles, somebody yells “split,” which signals that players can begin flipping their letters and creating words. The goal is to create words, which connect and insersect similar to those in the game Scrabble. When a player uses all of his or her tiles, they yell “peel,” and each player must draw another tile from the bunch. If a player wishes to get rid of a tile, he or she can call out “dump” and exchange the tile for three new ones from the bunch. Play goes on until there are less tiles in the bunch than players. At that point, the first person to use all of his or her remaining letters yells, “Bananas!” This person wins once the other players confirm the winning hand. If an illegal word is found in that player’s “hand,” he or she is declared a “rotten banana” and their tiles are returned to the bunch, and play resumes among the remaining players.