Saturday, March 1, 2008

Bananagrams are appealing!


How do you make an anagram game appealing to a bunch of people? Well, package it in a banana skin and call it Bananagrams!

Bananagrams is a really great game. We gave a Bananagrams game to our best friends as a "hostess gift" last night for our appreciation of them inviting us to dinner. After dinner we cleared the table and unpeeled the game. We had a blast. We played several rounds trying to make the letter tiles into different words while we learned the game rules and when to peel, dump, and call bananas.

As the four of us played the game it was really fun to see how each of us put together the letters to make words we that came to our minds. After playing four rounds, Michael figured it was best to start with one long word and branch words off of that. Dianne (the PhD) was making all sorts of scientific words, but got hung up the first round because she picked too many vowels. Heidi got the hang of it quickly and won a round. I won the Banana Smoothie round ("Banana Smoothie" is just one variation on how to play the game).

It is easy to see why Bananagrams has won so many prestigious awards. The game challenges the mind, stimulates creativity, promotes some healthy competition, and has several different ways of being played. I also have to mention, the game is low tech – no batteries required, no game board to use, no scores to keep, it stores in a little pouch, and is very portable. In addition to being a good staple in your household game collection, Bananagrams will make a great travel game.

Bananagrams is a goHeidi favorite.

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