science of board games

I love word games in general. However, the standard word game, Scrabble, is a little inflexible to play with more than four people without some consequences in how the game plays: the game already plays quite slowly, and more people make the tiles run out more quickly.

Enter Bananagrams. It's Scrabble, but without the board, points, or turn-order. Everyone scrambles to complete their own mini-Scrabble board (minus the physical board) piece-by-piece. Whoever can use all of their letters first wins. The tiles are given out piecemeal, making it important to plan ahead with words you can build off later.

My favorite part of the game is that it is ridiculously fun, flexible in space (it can be played on practically any surface), and flexible in numbers of players: it supports 2–8 by default, but there's not much of a reason it can't scale bigger, especially if you combine two sets. Since my board game group tends to vary pretty wildly in number of players and in space available, flexibility is always valued.

In addition, the game is just a bunch of letters in a bag. Although the game is cheap, you almost don't have to buy it to play it, especially if you have a few extra sets of Scrabble laying around (and who doesn't).

Even better, you can make the rules completely your own. Some suggestions are even presented in the package, but I've heard of one group awarding two winners: the one who wins the game traditionally (by completing the board fastest) and also for most creative word. You could also do longest word, or most complicated design, etc. Like all good games, Bananagrams is limited only by your imagination.