Word.Nut

I've found the solution to the problem I identified with Bananagrams and Scrabble (the lack of punctuation). It's called Word.Nut.

Word.Nut is like Bananagrams, but it has punctuation marks and also the option of using upper or lower case letters - you flip them over depending on which you want. It's made by a New Zealand company called Logical Toys. I came across it in a games shop and bought it as a Christmas present for my cousin's kids.

They duly cracked it open on Christmas day (pardon the pun) and gave it a go. One of the drawbacks appears to be the vagaries of the instruction booklet which seemed to suggest that you could actually make up your own rules for the game. This could be good or bad depending on how you look at it.

After the Christmas festivities it was too much brainwork to figure out the actual rules, so we made our own simplified version - you have 12 letters at any one time and try to make as many words as you can (they don't necessarily need to join). You may not swap letters with other players, but you may replenish your supply.

Here is an example of what one player did:

Another example, showing what the case of the game looks like (punctuation added by George!):

 

It would be even better if they had retained the points scoring system from Scrabble! But that would probably have been a patent infringement, or something. According to the official rules, you score one point (I think) for each word, which doesn't really account for levels of difficulty of vocab.

I do think the game has potential for a class activity, but it would have to be thought through carefully or refined through several playings!

Check out your local games store, or IQ Toys if you're in Australia.