I love how quick Bananagrams is to start.  You just lay out all the tiles, before picking a set amount depending on how many are playing.  Then you start making up your own word grid.  We loved this game so much as a family I am a bit sad that we didn’t add it to our collection sooner.

Bananagrams has been available to buy since January 2006!  As an avid collector of games, it was a serious lapse of judgement not having Bananagrams in our lives!  Up to eight people can play which is a decent number to cover everyone when we get together.

This game will also come in handy for our holidays.  Everything fits neatly into the banana shaped storage bag so Bananagrams is a portable game.  It doesn’t take much space but is hugely entertaining.

Furthermore, Bananagrams is an educational game.  This is the perfect game to encourage your children to practise their spelling and expand their vocabularies.  My children didn’t even realize how much they were learning as they were having so much fun.  Usually if I try and give them a spelling test there will be a huge grumble of complaint.  But with Bananagrams they were quickly trying to spell lots of different words.  I noticed when he got the hang of it his words did get longer and more complicated too.

I love the pace of the game.  You can feel the adrenaline building as you desperately try and get rid of your tiles first.  I always start off quite well but then the pressure usually gets to me and my husband sweeps in to win!

If you get a letter you want to swap you have to pick up three more letters in exchange!  So, if you can its worth trying to use the tiles you have to the best of your ability!  Too many swaps (called dumping in this game) and you suddenly have a lot more tiles to add to your word grid!

The first person who uses up their initial tile allocation shouts PEEL and everyone picks up another tile.  If you don’t keep up the pace you can soon lag behind.  There are a couple of variations you can play.  I like the sound of Banana Smoothie where you have no peeling or dumping as ALL the tiles are shared out evenly at the beginning of the game.  Although I would probably then focus on everyone’s word grids to see how they are getting on instead of concentrating on my own!

You can even play it on your own.  I might do this to get quicker so I can start beating my husband at the game!  To do this take 21 tiles (like 2-4 players would start with initially) then continue as normal.  You can time your games to see how much your improving.

Win a Bananagrams Game

If you would like a chance of winning this fantastic game, please fill out the form below by the 8^th of July.

Please also check out my other competitions too!