Exercise your brain with Bananagrams.

Exercise your brain with Bananagrams. During the last holiday season I stopped by the local game storelooking for Looking forIn the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. a few good board games This is a list of board games. This page classifies board games according to the concerns which might be uppermost for someone organizing a gaming event or party. See the article on game classification for other alternatives, or see for a list of board game articles. for my teen age sons. The first clerkto help me was a seasonal worker and I was soon convinced that she wasnot even much of a game player. When I finally got the regular clerk, anobvious game geek A technically oriented person. It has typically implied a "nerdy" or "weird" personality, someone with limited social skills who likes to tinker with scientific or high-tech projects. The origin of the term dates back to the late 1800s. , he recommended Bananagrams. Since I love word games,I quickly put in on the pile. On Christmas morning when I watchedBen's reaction to this gift I realized I had made a 7year-old's decision. This was clearly a game I would like, but nothim. Indeed, that was the case. I went crazy for this game. You mighteven say I went bananas ba��nan��as?adj. SlangCrazy: "That's the horrible thing when you're bananas for Bananagrams. And after a couple of games, Iwas the only family member still interested. I took it to a couple ofholiday gatherings and the consensus seemed to be that people eitherloved it or grew quickly bored with it. If you like Scrabble ScrabbleGame in which two to four players compete in forming words with lettered wooden tiles on a 225-square board. Words spelled out by letters on the tiles interlock like words in a crossword puzzle. Words are scored by adding up the point values of their letters. or Boggle bog��gle?v. bog��gled, bog��gling, bog��glesv.intr.1. To hesitate as if in fear or doubt.2. , you will likely agree with me. Thisgame however is quite different than any word games I have played in thepast. Any number can play. It consists of 144 letter tiles including atleast two of every letter, and of course a generous number of vowels.You begin play by turning all the tiles down. Each player selects thesame number of tiles (more for fewer players, and fewer as the number ofplayers increases). All players play simultaneously, each making acrossword style layout with their tiles. When any player uses all theirtiles they say, "peel" and everyone must take another tile tile,one of the ceramic products used in building, to which group brick and terra-cotta also belong. The term designates the finished baked clay—the material of a wide variety of units used in architecture and engineering, such as wall slabs or blocks, floor .Play continues until there are not enough tiles for everyone to takeone. At that point the game is over and the person who completed his orher crossword first wins. Any player can rearrange re��ar��range?tr.v. re��ar��ranged, re��ar��rang��ing, re��ar��rang��esTo change the arrangement of.re their tiles any waythey wish at any time as long as all resulting words are valid. The onlyrestriction on words is a typical ban on proper nouns proper nounn.A noun belonging to the class of words used as names for unique individuals, events, or places. Also called proper name. . In our house weadded no slang, but allowed any other words like archaic or informal. Weused our favorite dictionary for challenges. Challenges happen at theend and if the winner is found to have a bad word, then instead of thewinner he or she is declared a rotten rot��ten?adj. rot��ten��er, rot��ten��est1. Being in a state of putrefaction or decay; decomposed.2. Having a foul odor resulting from or suggestive of decay; putrid.3. banana. Play is quick and the better players are those who have good wordknowledge but more importantly those who can be fluid and flexible intheir thinking. As play progresses each player constructs a relativelyintricate crossword. On each "peel" they must add a letter,then another, and so on. It is relatively easy to simply add letters.For example, if you had an open letter "n" in a word and youdrew an "a", you could simply make "an". And ofcourse if you then drew a "d" you could make "and"and so on. Often however, the new letter is more problematic. In thatcase, if you are mentally flexible enough to abandon parts toaccommodate the new letter, it improves your play. As you might suspect, the uncommon letters are more difficult toinclude. If you draw a "q", "z", "k", or"v", you often need a complex strategy. Unless there is anobvious solution, my strategy is to remove parts to make a place for thenew letter. As I remove letters, I try to take only the easier letters,and as few of them as possible. To hone your game play it is important to be able to spot the newword that can be created by adding a new letter in the middle of a word,for example to make "band" from "bad". Also,flipping FlippingBuying shares in an initial public offering (IPO), and then selling the shares immediately after the start of public trading to turn an immediate profit.flippingmultiple vowels around, from word to word is often veryhelpful. For example, maybe you had the word "on" andsomewhere else you had the word "far". If you drew a letter"v", you could take the "o" from "on",change "far" to "for", leaving you with an"a" to make "van" where you had "on". The fun I found in this game was in using my word sense in adifferent way. As I played it seemed that I was exercising my brain.After getting into the game, I found as I turned the letters over I wasimmediately spotting word possibilities, but also thinking about howwords might become other words (e.g., "thin" might become"think"). I believe playing this game could be one of thoseuseful mental exercises that keeps your brain in good working order. Itsure felt that way to me anyway! I enjoyed the game so much I wanted to know more about it. Icontacted the creators through their web site(http://www.bananagrams-intl.com/). I found their story veryinteresting. It was a family created game. Three generations of wordgame lovers created it for their own enjoyment. Friends encouraged themto make it available to the public and in 2006 they did just that. Todate they have sold over a quarter million units and the game has wonnine awards. I highly recommend this game. If you love word games like I do, Iam sure you will love it. One note of caution however--If it turns outyou are very good at this game, don't gloat and don't peel tooquickly or you might wind up playing nothing but Bananagrams solitaire solitaireor patience,any card game that can be played by one person. Solitaire is the American name; in England it is known as patience. There are probably more kinds of solitaire than all other card games together. . MATTHEW M. MAURER Westfield, Indiana Westfield is a town in Hamilton County, Indiana, United States. The population was 9,293 at the 2000 census. GeographyWestfield is located at (40.032266, -86.129015)GR1.