Bananagrams
Friday, July 3rd, 2015
I bought Banangrams and it is SO FUN! It encourages you to come up with your own rules. So I went online and found my favorites:
The variants that I like playing:
- you have to know what the definition is of the word you are trying to use (which stops people from using memorized words like QI, when they’ve never looked up the definition)
- when exchanging a letter, leave it face up so others can choose to pick it up or not. *source
- choose a theme. One of the words has to be within that theme (example: colors – someone might have “RED” and another might have “GREEN”) *source
- “chenanigrams” – once a player yells, “Bananas!” everyone else picks one word from their grid to act out like charades. *source
- A version I’ve dubbed “Banana Drizzle” (until I figure out a better name) which I found on *source & *source. The variation goes like this:
When someone says “peel,” every non-peeler quickly chooses one tile from their own area (maybe an X or Q that has you stumped), gives that tile to the peeler, then draws a new replacement tile from the center. So with 5 players, the peeler receives 4 new tiles (one from each other player) and everybody else has swapped an unwanted tile for a random new one.
At the end of the game, whoever has the most placed tiles wins (which might not be the last person to peel).
Trashing tiles (which normally increases your number of tiles) is not allowed. You just have to wait for someone else to peel.
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Convert from Banangrams to Appleletters
Appleletters is pretty much the same set of tiles. Although the appleletters version has thicker tiles, but I haven’t found it to be much of a problem.
to convert your Bananagrams set for Appletters remove the following tiles:
A-3, B-1, C-1, D-2, E-6, G-2, H-0, I-3, J-1, K-1, L-0, M-0, N-1, O-3, P-1, Q-1, R-1, S+2*, T-1, U-3, V-2, W-2, X-1, Y-0, Z-1
* Note you do not have enough ‘S’ tiles for the game. *source
I happen to own the WILDTILES version of bananagrams that has six monkey tiles. So I can just use two monkey tiles as the extra needed “S” tiles. = )
One day I’ll make a handy printout to move the letters quickly.
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Other useful variant links are:
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/forum/7729/bananagrams/variants