Here’s a game for these Long Winter Nights and the assorted holidays we fill them with. It’s an embellishment on one of my favorite word nerd game, Bananagrams, aka Speed Scrabble, that I invented (though I imagine other people have invented the same game elsewhere) with my friend Scout.
My friend Scout and I have been friends since she was nineteen and I was twenty-two. We became friends sometime between when she, leaning coolly on a car, asked me if I “poked the smot,” and I said no and felt a pang of deep adolescent uncoolness, which looking back is kind of hilarious, and when we walked across Olympia together, stopping only to buy a banana.
Speaking of bananas, they are one of the funniest things. I know this because I’ve done a highly scientific study of what my students think is funny. The results: bananas, bacon, things going wrong at nuclear power plants, and anybody named Bob. But I digress.
Scout and I, after we became friends, spent many random evenings hanging out, making art, listening to music, eating popcorn because it’s really cheap, and playing word games. This is one of the best:
Play a round of Bananagrams or Speed Scrabble, depending on if your tiles come out of a Scrabble game or a nifty banana-yellow pocket. (Rules here if you didn’t buy the pocket.)
Everyone move one place to the left.
Write a poem or story that uses all the words that are now in front of you (that your friendly left-side neighbor assembled into their crossword), as well as any other words you feel like.
Bonus points for sticking to an agreed-upon theme, say 2021, holidays with family, or bananas.
The reason this game is fun is because a) Bananagrams is fun, b) it encourages you not to cannibalize the fantastic words out of your crosswords, and c) it makes you write poetry or stories with enough required randomness you’re really not responsible for if they’re bananas or not. Which makes for some awesome times.