Banana Flambe - A tribute to Abe

Among the tributes to the memory of Bananagrams creator Abraham Nathanson is this wonderful story about how he was once approached to collaborate in a game-designing competition as part of Providence's first Maker Faire. The story gives a sense of who Abe was and what the community of Providence is like. Enjoy!

Spanish Bananagrams tiles spotted in the wild!

Since the introduction of the Spanish version of Bananagrams, I've been bugged by the fact that none of the online photos showed what the extra Spanish tiles looked like. And then I found this creative attempt to make sentences using all the tiles in a Bananagrams set. As the set on hand happened to be Spanish Bananagrams, three of the four special Spanish Bananagrams tiles are visible in the picture: LL, RR, and CH:

There you have it folks: actual proof that Spanish Bananagrams is not merely a figment of my imagination. (Though I admit that the image of the CH tile is almost as fuzzy as a Bigfoot photo.)

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UPDATE: Huzzah! Official photos of Spanish Bananagrams grids can now be seen on sites selling Spanish Bananagrams. And they include the elusive Ñ tile: (Click for a bigger version of the image on the Amazon product page.)

Abraham Nathanson, Rest in Peace

PrincessFroglips sums up our feelings perfectly, in this photograph, "Bananagrams Memorial Game Luncheon" (from Flickr).

Bananagrams art video

I don't normally post videos, but there are not a lot of pangram videos out there, so I am willing to make an exception. It is a 30-second exception and is playful and delightful and features Bananagrams.

Here is the direct link to the video on Vimeo. If you don't like Flash, it is also viewable there through an HTML5 player, or you can download the video, if you sign up for an account.

The guy responsible for this video has a blog where you can see his other, more intense work with images.

What I like about this video most is how it seems like merely the introduction to a grand adventure with Rube Goldberg machines and wordplay and Banangrams.