Bananagrams

Over the weekend I learned to play an excellent game called Bananagrams.
The game requires picking tiles and assembling all of them into words, crossword style. The first person to use up all the letters announces, "Peel!" Then you have to take another tile. The thing of it is, you can assemble a truly gorgeous board -- I had one with vixen and women and another with quotient and quince -- and still not use up all your letter tiles. When that happens, a player has to do two things: (1) look for the small words, because as with so many things in life, the little things can make all the difference; and (2) a player has to be willing to take the whole thing apart and start over. You'd be surprised how hard that is, how quickly you can get attached to words you've just arranged before you, but the willingness to take it all apart is the key to the game. And maybe some other stuff, too.