Getting your player ready...
Abraham Nathanson, 80, who at the age of 76 invented Bananagrams, a fast-moving letters-and-words game that became a runaway hit, died Sunday at his summer house in Narragansett, R.I. The cause was cancer, said his daughter Rena.
Nathanson got the idea for Bananagrams while playing Scrabble with his grandson, chafing at the game’s pace.
“We need an anagrams game so fast, it’ll drive you bananas,” he recalled saying in an interview with The Boston Globe last year. He came up with a game that combined the word-building aspect of Scrabble and a beat-the-clock urgency.
The game was a hit from the moment it made its debut at the London Toy Fair in 2006. More than 3 million were sold last year.
The New York Times
