Monday, July 04, 2011

On Bananagrams



“Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.” - Jawaharlal Nehru

I received this response to quote cited above.

My friend says that the Bananagrams Board is a metaphor for life - if the pieces you are dealt don't look right, keep moving them around until they do. Stay flexible but stay true to yourself!

My reply follows:

I love Bananagrams. I like how your friend thinks (and appreciate your remembering and sharing the thought). I never thought of the metaphor of it... Until now. It's tempting when you "split"/start to want to turn the letters over in as quick a way as possible, even all at once - but it may make more sense to take the time to turn each one over alone and take it in for a second. It's the long path that's short (derech aruchah shehi ketazarah) because you get to plan ahead: "Eizehu chacham? Ha'roeh et hanolad." -"Who is wise? He who sees projected consequences."

Sometimes you've built up a whole board and then late in the game you get Z and you can't just tack it on to the way things are, and you can't trade it away, so the only choice is to shuffle things around, undo and re-do... Of course, sometimes there is a chance to just switch the letter for a new one, but when you gain you also lose. One letter you see and deem hard out equals three unknown letters in to deal with.

The later it gets in the game the harder the letters you're going to get will be because a lot of others have dumped their letters and taken choice letters already. Sometimes you have to stretch yourself and change your way of thinking to see words you wouldn't think of/see otherwise. You have to really pay attention to each letter, even the ones that tend not to be your favorite go to ones, and see how you can work with them.

Remember that while you're working on your board others are working on their own boards, everyone has a board - even if they're not overtly interlinking (like in Scrabble). Don't assume someone else's board is better; if you traded boards with another player you'd still have shuffling to do and unknown letters being drawn and frustrating juggling to do. If you did trade you'd probably soon want your own board back.

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

So wise and witty!

July 5, 2011 at 1:33 AM  
Blogger rabbi neil fleischmann said...

I guess that would be witty across and wise down under the w - I think that's how I'd play it.

July 5, 2011 at 1:37 AM  
Blogger Anne D said...

I pass by the Bananagrams office nearly every day. At least Rhode Island is exporting *something* in this awful economy! :-)

July 8, 2011 at 3:06 PM  
Blogger rabbi neil fleischmann said...

A friend of mine met the inventor of it at a games convention. She said he was a nice elderly Jewish man. he was playing Scrabble with his grandson one day and decided it need to be mixed up a bit. he played with words in his head and came up with bananagrams. I think the packaging is brilliant. He was nice and chatty with my friend. The pictures in the game of people playing are all his family members. His daughter helps run the business, actually now took it over. he passed away not so long ago. I had the idea of interviewing him, but when I googled him I found that I was too late. He mentioned to my friend that he's heard that it was popular game with Orthodox Jews, who playit on Shabbos (true). He got a kick out of that. I got a banagrams pen out of the meeting. It's a great export, you should be proud. He and his team has refused to be bought out by any big game company.

July 10, 2011 at 1:19 AM  
Anonymous UK said...

Such a great game. My kids are still at the "chutes and ladders" stage, but I'm excited to get to play more complex games with them some day. I have bananagrams in the game closet just waiting for their spelling skills to get to where we can play it together.

January 5, 2012 at 4:02 AM  

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