Bananagrams

Friday night post-work drinks. A Thai meal washed down with a couple of bottles of wine. Not usually the ideal preparation to learn a new game.

So it was with some trepidation that after a meandering stagger back to our friends’ house, we agreed to accompany another bottle of wine with a game we’d not played before. Fortunately, Bananagrams is so simple that even if you’re finding walking in a straight line challenging, you can still pick it up pretty quickly.

Out of the box there’s not much to Bananagrams. Just a banana-shaped canvas pouch, 144 letter tiles and a single A5 sheet of instructions.

And the aim of the game is pretty straightforward too. Take some letters, arrange them into a free-form crossword, fastest to finish wins.

Add in a couple of nice twists and some banana related puns along the way and the pace and sense of jeopardy remains high.

Set-Up

1. Tip out the tiles – enjoy the satisfying clicking sound from the high-quality tiles!
2. Turn them all face-down – more frustrating; the tiles are perhaps a little small for adult hands.
3. Shuffle them around a bit and take your tiles (11 for a seven- or eight-player game, up to 21 if you’re playing with 2-4). Leave the remaining tiles in the middle of the table.

Wait for it….

No peeking….

And “SPLIT!”

…The Race Is On

Turn your tiles over as quickly as you can. This is a race and you need to get word-building as soon as you can.

Arrange your tiles into an intersecting word grid. If you’re the first to use up all your letters, shout “PEEL”. Everyone must stop what they’re doing and take another letter from the leftovers pile. Revel in the glorious seconds of triumph when you’re the first to create a crossword – and you’ve disrupted your opponents’ trains of thought to boot.

But oh no! One bad draw and your opponents will quickly catch up. You’ve picked up a Q and don’t have a U – that’s not going to work. Shout “DUMP” and you can return your unwanted Q to the pile. You can do it as many times as you like, but you must take another three tiles each time in exchange.

The game continues with players manically arranging and re-arranging their letters and words, dumping, peeling and taking new letters until there are fewer tiles in the remainders pile than the number of players.

The first person to complete their crossword calls out “BANANAS” and is declared the winner.

But wait – the other players get a chance to inspect your grid. ‘Is Quire really a word?’ they ask. ‘Of course it is.’ you respond, ‘What would you ask for if you needed 24 sheets of paper?’

Avoid proper nouns, abbreviations or spelling mistakes or you’ll be declared a “ROTTEN BANANA” and will have to start again!!!

And that’s it. It’s fast-paced, it’s competitive and it’s a great game for families as well as the inebriated. You can play with up to 8 people and each game typically lasts about ten minutes, so as long as your players are fairly evenly matched, it stands up to multiple repeat plays.

Also, it is lightweight and compact, making it a good travel game.

Want More?

The out of the box instructions suggest a few alternative games. However, like the banana puns they’ve used to name the games, I feel they’re stretching things a little far here.

Banana smoothie involves dealing out all of the letter tiles equally amongst players at the start of the game and playing without the peeling or dumping – fastest to use all their letters wins.

Banana café is the same game as the original, but just using the first 21 tiles you take out of the pouch.

And banana solitaire is a race against the clock one-player variant where you try to beat your personal best time to use all the letters.

Bananagrams – Other Game Variants

If the standard option feels a bit straight-laced, there’s also a Party Edition, which introduces forfeits. If, like me, you struggle turning the tiles or need larger letters there’s a Big Letter edition. And there’s an entry-level game aimed at children as young as 4.

Bananagrams is a word play game where players will collect letter tiles to create words in their own intersecting grid. To do this, players must first use up their 11-21 starting letter tiles. After they will shout “peel,” to collect more letters from the middle of the table. Once these have depleted, players race to place their tiles. If a player manages to add all their tiles into their grid they exclaim, “Bananas!” If the player’s grid checks out and there are no misspelt or made-up words, they are victorious and are heralded, Top Banana.

Sounds easy enough? But like most word games, Bananagrams can be difficult as you race to the end and get stuck with a dreaded ‘Q’. So here are my top tips to help you become, Top Banana!

Go Big Or Go Home

To win Bananagrams you need to get off the line quick. To give yourself the best head start you need to create the longest word you can out of your starting letters. A long word at the beginning means 2 things; you use more of your letters, and you have more letters to expand from. A long starting word also means your grid will be spacious as you have more letters to network from.

To Prefix Or Suffix

Knowing prefixes and suffixes will help you a lot in this game. For those not common with these terms let me break it down. A prefix is something which you can add before the stem of a word to turn it into something else. For example, if you have ‘usual’ in your grid you can add the prefix un- to turn it into ‘unusual’. A suffix is the opposite, so it’s something that is added to the end like -ful, -er, -ed, -ing, -ly, -ent, -est, -ity and more. Knowing key prefixes and suffixes can help you shed letter tiles quickly and adapt words in your grid.

Adaptable Words

Similar to prefixes and suffixes it’s good to choose words which can easily be adapted into others. So, you can start with a 3-letter word like ‘hat’ and eventually turn it into; ‘that’, ‘hate’, ‘thatch’ and more. You can then adapt these words with suffixes like ‘hated’ or ‘hateful’ to really stretch your letters. Having flexible words means you can add letters quickly and expand faster.

When To Dump

One mechanic in Bananagrams lets you dump. Dumping is where you put 1 letter back in the middle and pick up 3 new ones. It’s a great way to get rid of pesky letters but it also lands you with more tiles to shed. Dumping is best used in the early game because there are more tiles to choose from and you can hide the letter you didn’t want. Also, as you have more letters to choose from, you are likely to get vowels or common consonants that will help you develop your grid. Dumping in the late stages is risky as you have less letters to choose from and are more likely to pick up something worse. It can be dangerous to dump excessively, so use it wisely.

Mix It Up

Sometimes it is easy to get attached to your grid. However, don’t be afraid to mix it up and get rid of words to make space for new ones. Take time in the early game to change up your grid and expand on the length of your words. Your starting grid will not be the one which sees you all the way to the end. Nothing is fixed in Bananagrams and if you get fixated on keeping everything you will find it hard to add. But be careful, too much shuffling will leave you with nothing as other players hurtle towards the end. When mixing it up make sure you are adhering to the other tips to make it worthwhile.

Two-Letter Lifesavers

Like Scrabble, two letter words are a lifesaver. Absorbing a two-letter dictionary before entering a Bananagrams game can give you that winning edge. Quick two-letter words can keep you peeling faster and help you tidy away those rogue tiles as you draw closer to the end. It may be hard to remember them all but here are some good ones to keep in mind.

Qi, ax, za, ew, pa, pi, re, se, ti, ta, xu, xi and sh.

Grid Mastery

Although mixing up your grid is a good strategy in the early game, you don’t want to be doing this late on. If you spend too much time mixing up your grid you will lose valuable time. Instead, you want to build your grid as wide as possible to avoid running into dead ends. If you build your grid wide, you’ll have more letters to grow from and more possibilities. For example, if you had the starting word, ‘gameplay’, you wouldn’t want to build the words, ‘graphic’, ‘mimic’ or ‘pope’ off it. This is because all the words will be going down and then you limit which letters you can use in ‘graphic’, ‘mimic’ and ‘pope’. Instead try and make words which will go up and down. Then you’ll have room to build left and right.

In short, small tight grids are bad.

The Dreaded ‘Q’

Picking up a ‘Q’ can feel like a curse if you don’t have a ‘U’. Mainly because, most words with Q in them require a ‘U’. Instead of despairing, try and remember these ‘Q’ words which do not require a ‘U’.

Qi, qat, qin, qis, qaid, qoph, qats, qanat, qapik, qorma, qadis, qibla, qaids.

We can thank Middle Eastern dialect for most of these amazing words which stop you getting stuck in last place.

Fast Fingers

Half of the Bananagrams battle is speed. And I am not talking about the time it takes to think of words. Flipping over starting tiles, dumping and peeling all take time. To speed things up adopt a strategy to flip over as many as you can. Having fast fingers will help you stay in the race.

Grouping letters is also handy. Once you flip a tile organise it into vowels, useful consonants or the not so useful. This will help you survey letters and construct words quicker.

Proofreading

With adrenaline coursing through your veins, it’s hard to not shout “Bananas,” when your grid is complete. However, hold off if you can. Make sure you scan over your grid and check there are no misspelt words, proper nouns, abbreviations or fake words. If you stop the game and have an anomaly, you will be coined the Rotten Banana and miss out on the winning spot. If you have time, a little proofreading never hurts.

There you have it. Take this knowledge and earn the title, Top Banana!