Designer Notes

Inspired by Bananagrams, made into a Russian language version. The letter distribution is based on the original name and the distribution of letters in the language, please see spreadsheet attached. Since the Russian alphabet has more letters than English, I increased the number of tiles to 150.

Laser cut and engraved using 1/4" acrylic, each tile is 3/4" x 3/4". The banana pouch is hand sewn, I'll try to get the pattern uploaded as well.

How to Play

Setting Up Bananagrams

Place all tiles facedown in the center of the table. These form the BUNCH (куча)

Each player now takes their ‘STARTING TILES’ from the BUNCH:

2-4 players: Start with 21 tiles each
5-6 players: Start with 15 tiles each
7-8 players: Start with 11 tiles each

How To Play Bananagrams

Object: Be the first to use all your letters.

To start, any player calls out “SPLIT!” (раскол) Everyone simultaneously turns their tiles faceup and races to arrange them in their own intersecting word grid... Words must read left to right horizontally, or top to bottom vertically. You may rearrange your grid at any time, and as often as you like.

Whenever a player places their last faceup letter in their grid, that person calls out “PEEL!” (очистить) Every player—including the one saying “PEEL”—then takes another tile from the BUNCH.

At any time during the game, you may call out “DUMP!” (отвал) and put one of your letters back, facedown in the BUNCH. However, you MUST take three more tiles in exchange! This has no effect on other players and there’s no limit to the number of times you may DUMP.

Winning

When the BUNCH is depleted to fewer tiles than number of players, the first person to use ALL their letters in a connected word grid and call out “BANANAS!” wins that hand and is declared TOP BANANA!

Other players may now inspect the winning grid. If it contains a misspelled word, proper noun, abbreviation or other unacceptable word, the other players call out “ROTTEN BANANA!” (гнилой банан) and that player is out of the game. The ROTTEN BANANA’s letters are returned to the BUNCH facedown. Play resumes for the other players until one of them calls out “BANANAS!”