Bananagrams

You're playing Scrabble with three friends. You love the game but you hate the long delays between your turns. You can only spend so much time planning your next move, as someone invariably messes up your plans. What can you do? Bananagrams! In this Scrabble-like game, you compete against up to 7 other players, but your tiles, played and unplayed, are always under your control. In essence, you have your own flexible game of Scrabble going on, and so do your opponents. Start with your tiles (the number depending on the number of players), turn them over, and start making connecting and intersecting words. All letters are the same point value, and you can rearrange your words at any time. When any player has played all his letters, he takes a new tile from the Bunch, as do all the other players. If a player cannot play a letter, he can put the tile back and draw three other tiles. Play continues until there are fewer tiles in the Bunch than there are players. The first player to play all his tiles is the winner of that round (if all his words are correct). Rounds typically take around ten minutes, but can be as little as five, so games can consist of as many rounds as you decide. Variations of the game are also possible, even a solitaire game. Bananagrams comes in a cloth pouch that looks like (you guessed it) a banana, and includes 144 ivory-like tiles and instructions.