Illustration by Ed Appleby
‘Bananagrams’ board game review
By Ed Appleby, Senior Columnist
2/5
There is shockingly little potassium in this game.
Bananagrams (2006) is a word-building game for one to eight people designed and published by Abraham Nathanson and his family. In the game, players grab an assortment of tiles from a bag and try to make words, Scrabble-style. Once a player has used each of their tiles to make words, all of the players then draw an additional tile. Words can be broken up and rearranged into new combinations. Once all tiles have been drawn from the centre of the table, the first player to completely use all of their tiles wins.
If you do not like Scrabble (1948), you will not like this game. The gameplay is similar, but the stress of making long, high-scoring words is replaced by the need to make words quickly with a limited number of tiles. All players go at the same time, and it is difficult to catch up if you fall behind.
Luckily, the game is very short. The fast-paced nature causes the game to go by pretty quickly, making it a good filler game to play while waiting for other people, or if you’re playing with people who don’t have long attention spans. The game is also good for players without a huge vocabulary, as there are no word scores to worry about and a simple word is just as good as a complex one.
If you like Scrabble and are looking for something a little more fast-paced, this game may be for you. Its simple rules open it up to players of all experience levels, and it may be a good game to pull out around family, similar to Dominos (c. 15,000) or a card game like Gin Rummy (1909).
For me, I’d rather eat the tiles.
