Bananagrams

Bananagrams is a fast-paced game for 2-6 players where you use letter tiles to create words as fast as possible. Whichever player uses all their tiles first is the winner, so it won’t always be the player with the biggest vocabulary that triumphs.

Possessing a sense of humour often lacking in word games, Bananagrams is also full of terrible banana puns. At the start of a game, each player is working on building their own crossword-type grid of words with some of the 144 letter tiles in the game. Once a player needs more tiles they shout ‘Peel’ and every player has to take another tile from the ‘bunch’ in the middle. When no tiles are left in the bunch the first player to place all their tiles in their grid is the winner.

Letters played and words created do not determine the winner. Therefore, Bananagrams can be enjoyed by players of different skill levels. Having everyone play simultaneously means that games are quick and enjoyable. A game takes about 15 minutes and players asking for ‘one more game’ is very common. 

Presented in a Banana shaped zip bag, this game is portable and easy to store. The plastic letter tiles mean Bananagrams can be enjoyed down the pub as easily as it can be played on the kitchen table. 

Included in the rules are a solo mode as well as several other variants. These all provide ways to tailor the experience so your group can get the most enjoyment out of the game.

The way your grid of letters will keep changing as you try and accommodate a seemingly endless influx of new letters will cause it to expand in different directions. Sometimes the only way to place the ‘J’ you just picked up is by taking ‘Dust’ from the centre of the grid and creating ‘Adjust’ on the left-hand side. The only problem is that you’ve taken the ‘T’ from the end of ‘Carrot’ so now you’ve got to find somewhere to put those tiles.

It may seem that one player is winning, but it only takes one bad draw and the others will easily catch up. The player in first place is regularly announcing themselves with their shouts of ‘Peel’ and this will change several times over every game.

Quick to play and skilful without relying on dictionary knowledge, Bananagrams is a great way to get friends and family who don’t like word games to play a word game with you.