Should You Banana?

Do you like Scrabble, Upwords or Wordle? Are word games your jam? Do you ever want a game you can play anywhere, with up to 8 players? Do you want a game that comes in a banana shaped bag? If any of these questions was even a partial yes, then I implore you to check out Bananagrams.

How Do You Banana?

This is a word game where you are creating your own personal crossword puzzle from the tiles you have. Each player takes 21 scrabble style tiles face down and all together you start flipping them over as quickly as you can. Your random assortment of letters will start aligning in your brain as you connect “quoit” with “naturally”, and wrestle over whether you should overlap at the “t” or the “u”. You all work on your own personal puzzle trying to use up all your letters. You are allowed to dump letters, but for each one you dump into the middle, you must draw three new tiles into your personal pool.

You are all working on your own puzzle, racing to get rid of all your tiles, because the moment someone does, they shout “peel” and every player must draw a new tile. Which may mean you need to dismantle your hard earned crossword and rearrange it to accommodate the “g” you just picked up, or you may be lucky and able to sneak in adding an “s” to make a plural. The “peel” shouts will come thick and fast until there are not enough tiles left in the middle anymore for each player to take one. At that point whoever called peel has their worked checked for mistakes. If there are none then they win, if there are though they are dubbed the rotten banana and must hang their head in shame whilst the others play on.

Who Will Like To Banana?

If you are looking for a game suitable for couples, families and friends to play together then this could be for you. The game is easy to pick up and simple to play, with a little shot of adrenaline as you race to complete the crossword arrangement for your own tiles as quickly as possible. This is a small banana shaped bag containing a small rules leaflet and the plastic letter tiles. You can play it anywhere, inside or outside. We have played this on the side of the pool happily as well as in the park. The tiles are pretty bomb proof so you really can play it anywhere.

Round Up

Bananagrams is a family friendly word game that is really suitable for every household. You do not necessarily need to have the best vocabulary to get a win, you can win with shorter, more basic words, it is mostly about speed. This is not like Scrabble where positioning on the board matters, this is about being quick and ensuring that by the end you have no mistakes. No one else can influence your “board”, it is your own puzzle to work through as best you can.

This blog was written by Hannah Blacknell

Editors note: This post was originally published on 23rd August 2023. Updated on 25th September 2024 to improve the information available.