Videos of the Omegathon Bananagrams tournament

A couple of short videos from the Bananagrams round of PAX East 2011 Omegathon have shown up on YouTube.

As I understand it, there were 24 Omeganauts at the beginning of the Bananagrams round and 12 after it. This suggests that each team played Bananagrams once and winning their match was essential to advancing.

The first video shows the beginning of a match between two teams.


Watching this video, you can see the difficulties in having two people work on the same grid, particularly at the beginning. The team that the camera spends most of the time on does a pretty good job of coordinating their grid formation verbally. Starting with the long word HASTILY was a smart move. Also, the first team was able to get off to a really fast start because they got an easy set of letters to work with. The other team had to contend with a J, a Q, and two Xs.

The second video anticlimactically cuts to when the match is already over, and there is some controversy over whether the word HASTILY is legal. It's not nearly as interesting as the first video, but I include it for completeness.

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Further reading:

• My previous post on the Bananagrams Omegathon round with photos and discussion of Bananagrams doubles

Follow-up on Bananagrams at PAX East 2011 and Bananagrams doubles

Since this year's PAX East Omegathon paired up players into teams, the Bananagrams round was played in doubles mode. The picture below (from the official Bananagrams Twitter feed), shows a winning grid from the first round of the Bananagrams part of the Omegathon.



I attempted to read off the words from the grid and got:

   H A     P
  NOON B ZOO
   R DEER  IDES
  AS         A
   EEL    FIAT
     E  Z U  E
     A  O E  N
     D COIL
   TEETH
   A R U
   K   MUTER
   EON   I
    N   ME
   PEST
      I
     YET

A few comments on this picture: The grid incorporates a lot of the short words that I find myself using including EEL, EON, YET, and ZOO (two ZOOs, actually). CHUM also seems like a useful word to have in one's Bananagrams vocabulary. And observe the left and right branches of the grid and the way that the players have positioned themselves. If both players are right-handed, it seems to make sense for the player on the right to move closer to the table, so he can more easily reach the upper-right corner of the board with his right hand and still easily cover the lower-right corner of the board. You can see a similar posture adopted in photos of other teams.





It appears that the player on the left sometimes also turns toward the center; this is probably the best strategy, as it will allow the left hand to contribute more.

I've wanted to experiment with Bananagrams doubles for a while now. Knowing that it has been successfully played in the Omegathon gives me confidence that Bananagrams can work well as a team game.

UPDATE: Some video from the Omegathon Bananagrams round is now up

Bananagrams to be an event at the PAX East 2011 Omegathon

PAX (Penny Arcade Expo) is a semi-annual convention for fans of video games that also includes a few sessions about role-playing games, interactive fiction, and board games. A major event at every PAX is the "Omegathon", a multi-round game tournament for which the twenty (this year, thirty) contestants are chosen randomly from the pre-registered PAX attendees. The Omegathon always features a different set of games. Past selections have included Mario Kart, Doom, Connect Four, Dance Dance Revolution, Tetris, skee-ball, and Pong. The four games that have been announced so far for the March convention in Boston are Katamari Damacy, Operation, Jenga, and Bananagrams. While it won't be a tournament between the best Bananagrams players, I expect that there will be coverage of the event through video or other media, and it will be interesting to see how the competition is set up and how it plays out.

The Omegathon has never before included a word game. Bananagrams will be the first.

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Further reading

• Follow-up on Bananagrams at PAX East 2011 and Bananagrams doubles
• Videos of the Omegathon Bananagrams round
  

Before there was Bananagrams, there was Word-Sport

In the past, I've proposed, half-seriously, the idea of a future where Bananagrams is played on a serious tournament level, like Scrabble or chess. But it turns out that the idea of something like a Speed Scrabble tournament was floated and promoted before Bananagrams was even invented.

First, the game: It's called Word-Sport. Word-Sport is basically Speed Scrabble with some modifications. It is played with the entire Scrabble tile set (including the blanks, which are excluded from Speed Scrabble as normally played). Word-Sport oddly doesn't require that you actually link all your words into a single grid. Instead, there is a scoring system that offers rewards for single grids, for never allowing your opponent to peel (more feasible when you are playing with the smaller Scrabble tile set), and for words 7 or more letters long.

Plans were in the works for a version of the Word-Sport game you could buy (including some optional wild tiles) and a computer version of the game, playable over the Internet (modelled after Literati and paralleling the Large Animal Games Flash version of Bananagrams).

An equally fascinating part of the Word-Sport web site is the page that describes the birth of indoor rowing races. (Imagine a treadmill race, but with rowing machines). I am not making these races up. Apparently indoor rowing races inspired and motivated the idea of Word-Sport tournaments, complete with timers and specially designed tables.

Exploring the Word-Sport web site is like peering into an alternate universe because I can totally imagine a world where Word-Sport took off, pre-empting Bananagrams entirely.

Bananagrams online tournaments announced

According to the Bananagrams Twitter feed, there will be a tournament for the online version of Bananagrams (i.e., through Facebook and possibly other sites) on Monday, July 6th, 2009.

The event is described here (Facebook login required, but here is the relevant text) :

This is it, folks...the moment you've been waiting for.

You all have been practicing, so now it's time to show your stuff! The Bananagrams "Happy Monday" contest is a way for YOU, the players, to earn prizes and gain fame!

Here are the rules: Beat as many players as you can in Live Multiplayer games on Monday, July 6th, from 12:00am-5:00pm. That's it. Simple, right?

* GRAND PRIZE: 5,000 free Benjees and a set of elite TROPHY TILES (not available in the store).

* 2nd place: 2,500 free Benjees and 10 Charms.

* 3rd place: 1,000 free Benjees and 5 charms

* All top 25 players receive 250 Benjees and 3 charms.


The excitement begins on Monday, so start practicing and get ready to win! GOOD LUCK!

It's a virtual game, so all the prizes are virtual, too. I'm guessing that the "Benjee" is the online Bananagrams unit of currency for buying things in the virtual Bananagrams store. I do like the look of those trophy tiles!

UPDATE: This has turned into a regular, weekly event.

LATER UPDATE: These online tournaments have ceased, but I'm leaving this up for historical purposes.