Bananagrams – How they Made Creating Words into Something Exciting

Educational games have been around for a long time and despite how uncool they are considered to be, most of us are guilty of having played, and even enjoyed some of them, at least the famous ones such as Scrabble or Monopoly.

Like most of us can remember though, after a little bit the games became really boring for us kids, and looking back at it now, I see that it was due to one reason: the game wasn’t good at making us spend our energy… of which we had a lot.

However, as I was looking over the educational toys which have been put on the market for our kids today, I came across Bananagrams, and it seems to me that it actually presents a solution to the afore-mentioned flaw.

How Bananagrams Works

The game is very fun and simple. Here’re Bananagrams rules. The basic goal consists of creating your own crosswords using the 144 available tiles, with the number of possible players ranging from 2 to 8 and the recommended age being 7 and up. The game first starts by placing all the 144 tiles face down on the table. Subsequently, the blocks are distributed depending on the amount of players present, with a certain amount left on the table, referred to as the “bunch”.

Once this stage has passed, any player may say “split”, at which point the players need to flip over their tiles and start creating their own words as fast as possible, connecting the tiles horizontally and vertically. There are no turns as everyone tries to get it done at the same time.

Once a player runs out of tiles, he or she says “peel”, at which point they are entitled to take a tile from the remaining ones face down on the table. When this happens, every other player must also take a random tile from the bunch.

If a player is stuck with a hard letter or one which he or she doesn’t know how to use in the present situation, then they may put it back in the bunch in exchange for three random letters. When this happens the player must declare it by saying “dump”, and it should be noted that this has no direct effect on other players.

And so, you keep on playing the game that way until there are no more tiles left in the bunch. The first player to use all their tiles to form words wins and shouts “Bananas!”. At this point, if the other players choose to, they may inspect the winner’s words for spelling mistakes and to make sure they didn’t use proper nouns, which are not allowed for obvious reasons. If a mistake has been spotted, then the player is declared a “rotten banana”, he or she returns all the tiles into the bunch, and is eliminated from the round as the remaining players keep on playing.

Why Bananagrams Works

Remember how I mentioned earlier that what killed classic educational games was the lack of excitement and opportunity to spend energy they were providing? Well, as you can see, in this case the players are literally in a race of wits against each other, and as you probably know, a race of the mind can be just as exhausting as a physical one.

They are going to be scrambling every minute, trying to put together any words they know, probably learning some new ones in the process. Also, the more players there are, the faster a game ends (with 2 players it can take about 25-30 minutes, but with 4 players it takes about 10-12 min.).

All in all, I see this game as being fun, competitive, intense and educational, which is pretty much what any parent in their right mind would want for their kids, regardless if you just intend on using it to pass the time or actually help your child develop.

I should also mention that I’ve looked into the reviews of those who have actually tried this product, and it seems that there is a general consensus in regards to the game being challenging, fun and educational for kids, not to mention that it presents a great opportunity for the parent to bond with their child.

If this looks like the kind of game your child will enjoy and benefit from, then I suggest that you head on over to the link below the post , read for yourself what those who have tried it have to say, and perhaps even place an order yourself.