Find the longest word hiding in your Bananagrams tiles.
Type the tiles you were dealt, up to a full 21-tile hand, and see every word you can spell, grouped from longest to shortest. Use the question mark for a wild tile.
Advanced options
Enter some letters and press the button to see results here.
A race to use every tile
Bananagrams was created by Abraham Nathanson and Rena Nathanson of Cranston, Rhode Island, and became widely available in 2006. There is no board. Everyone flips their tiles face up and races to arrange them into a connected crossword-style grid, with words reading left to right or top to bottom. When you use every tile you call Peel, everyone draws another, and the grid grows until the center pile runs low and someone calls Bananas.
That makes the opening hand the most important moment. According to a rules summary from Asmodee UK, two to four players start with 21 tiles, five or six with 15, and seven or eight with 11. A long word built from your first tiles gives the rest of the grid something to hang from, and every extra letter in that first word is a letter you do not have to fit in later. This solver is built for exactly that step: it shows the longest word first.
The game is closer to a rack of letters than to a board game, so it works like our Scrabble Word Finder with one big difference. There are no tile scores and no premium squares, so only length and flexibility matter. Short words with awkward letters are also worth knowing, because the standard set has two each of J, K, Q, X and Z, and a Dump costs you tiles. A good habit is to find your longest word, then look for short words that use the leftovers.
A practical tip: do not always take the longest word on the list. If it uses up all your vowels, the leftover consonants may be impossible to place. Compare two or three long options and keep the one that leaves a balanced mix. For a more general letter search, the plain Anagram Solver shows only words that use every tile.
What letters are in a Bananagrams set?
The standard set has 144 tiles. Of those, 60 are vowels, or 41.7 percent. The counts below follow the published distribution.
| Letter | Tiles | Letter | Tiles | Letter | Tiles |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | 13 | J | 2 | S | 6 |
| B | 3 | K | 2 | T | 9 |
| C | 3 | L | 5 | U | 6 |
| D | 6 | M | 3 | V | 3 |
| E | 18 | N | 8 | W | 3 |
| F | 3 | O | 11 | X | 2 |
| G | 4 | P | 3 | Y | 3 |
| H | 3 | Q | 2 | Z | 2 |
| I | 12 | R | 9 |
How it works
Type each tile into the row, up to 21. Leave the extra boxes empty if you hold fewer.
Results are grouped by length with the longest at the top. Pick an anchor word for your grid.
Use the starts-with and must-include options to look for short words that use awkward letters you still hold.
Common questions
How many tiles do you start with in Bananagrams?
It depends on the number of players. A published rules summary says 2 to 4 players take 21 tiles each, 5 or 6 players take 15 each, and 7 or 8 players take 11 each. The tile row on this page holds 21, which covers the biggest starting hand.
What do Peel, Dump and Bananas mean?
Peel is what you call when you use all your tiles, and every player then draws one new tile. Dump lets you swap one tile you cannot use for three from the center pile. Bananas is the call a player makes when they use all their letters and the pile is nearly gone, which wins the game once the other players have checked the grid.
How many tiles are in a Bananagrams set, and how many are vowels?
The standard set has 144 lettered tiles. Counting A, E, I, O and U from the published distribution, 60 of them are vowels, which is 41.7 percent. E is the most common tile with 18 copies, and J, K, Q, X and Z have 2 each.
Does this solver build my whole Bananagrams grid?
No. It lists single words you can spell from the tiles you enter, longest first. Deciding how to connect words into one grid that uses every tile is the part of the game that stays with you, but a good long word is the best place to start.
Why would my group reject a word this tool shows?
The rules summary we checked rules out misspellings, abbreviations and proper nouns, and groups often agree on their own dictionary on top of that. This tool uses its own 30,000-word list, so a very obscure word may be missing and an unusual one may be shown that your group would not accept.
Can I use a blank tile?
The standard distribution has no blank tiles, but typing a question mark in any tile stands in for any letter. That helps if you play a variant with wild tiles or a house rule that adds them.
Is this useful for solo Bananagrams?
Yes. The game can be played alone, and the same approach applies. Enter your starting tiles, take the longest word as your anchor, and build outward from it with what is left.