A blog for fans of Bananagrams, word games, puzzles, and amazing things

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Article about Bananagrams, Zip-It, and Oh-Spell

A Rhode Island newspaper published an article on a talk that Abe Nathanson (the Top Banana at Bananagrams International) recently gave. There are lots of great quotes. For instance, he reveals that, while he originally wanted to have Bananagrams sets manufactured locally, that would have resulted in them being sold for seventy to eighty dollars apiece.

Best of all, there's plenty of information on the new crop of games:
Zip-It, Nathanson said, was developed to be played within an eight-square-inch area and "is almost as fast as rock, paper, scissors." It involves 24 six-sided cubes and plays like a sped up version of Bananagrams, with players racing each other to complete ten word-grids first.

The simplicity and rapidity of Zip-It, says Nathanson, would make it a great drinking game for bars.

"I suspect that at bars it will start as Zip-It and wind up as Tip-It," Nathanson said.

His latest creation is based on the traditional card game "Oh Hell." Nathanson's version, Oh Spell, is a word-based card game that substitutes font patterns for suits.

"I don't know why no one has thought of this before," Nathanson said. "With numbers you are limited, but with words, creation is infinite."


This tells us that Oh-Spell will be a trick-taking card game, which still sounds kind of like Quiddler, but we may have to wait a couple more months to find out exactly how Oh-Spell works.

UPDATE: Zip-It is finally available from Amazon. Get it while it's in stock!