Q&A for How to Play Bananagrams

Yes, Bananagrams can work as a solo game. Challenge yourself to beating your fastest time using up all your letters.

The rules are very much the same, except that this version of the game contains “wild” tiles that can represent any letter. Winning players have to announce the letters represented by the wild tiles in their grid so that the other players can ensure that the win was valid.

Bananagrams and Scrabble are both word-building games with a crossword structure, but the rules are different. Unlike in Scrabble, each player builds their own word grid, and all the players play simultaneously. The letters are not weighted differently, as they are in Scrabble, and there is more speed involved.

Each player has their own.

There is no limit.

You don't keep score in Bananagrams. The first person to finish their crossword once the tiles have run out from the center is the winner.

For double bananagrams, you combine two sets of bananagrams for longer gameplay and/or accommodating more players.

Nope. You cannot use proper nouns.

Once everyone has their tiles at the beginning of the game, at least one player says split to designate that everyone can flip over their tiles and start playing.

You don't need to leave spaces between the words as long as each connecting tile forms another word. Any tiles that connect on any side have to form a word though.

Not in the original game. And abbreviations almost count as cheating, as they're too short.

You could theoretically do that, but Bananagrams is a separate product you can buy. Importantly, Scrabble has 100 tiles, whereas Bananagrams has 144.

To play--yes. To win--it depends on the opponent's vocabulary and skills.

In that case, it sounds like the game would end in a tie.

Sure! You can adapt the rules to play by yourself or try to create one gigantic crossword using all the tiles. This is great for improving your skills at the game too!

In the basic game there are no turns - everyone is playing at the same time, so you keep adding words.

No, you cannot use abbreviations in Bananagrams.

No, all your words have to be correct when you say peel. Of course, if you accidentally have an illegal word, then that might have to be changed later on. However, if you don't need to have all your words correct, then that loses the significance of "peeling" because it would be the same as distributing all the tiles at the start.