Guest Author - Megan Romer

Anagramania, by Karmel Games, is a fun new twist on the Victorian parlor game which was usually called "Anagrams". There are three available editions of the game, junior, intermediate and advanced. We found that junior was a good place to start to get the hang of the game, but quickly stepped up to intermediate. I haven't played advanced, but judging by the difficulty of intermediate, I think it's probably pretty tough.

In Stefan Fatsis's book "Word Freak", about the competitive Scrabble circuit, he described how expert Scrabble players often quiz each other on anagrams, giving all of the letters of a 15-letter word and seeing who can unscramble them first. For any Scrabble player moving into the competitive circuit, I can recommend this game for practicing your anagrams and getting a hang for the art of unscrambling.

This game is not just a warm-up excersize for Scrabblers, though, it's plenty of fun on its own! Play the junior version with your kids to practice their spelling and get them to think about words and phonemes in an abstract way. Play one of the tougher editions as an adult party game for an intellectual challenge. It's very versatile and very fun.

ANAGRAMANIA AT-A-GLANCE:

GAME BOX INCLUDES: Gameboard, clues and answers for 24 games (more available with affordable expansion packs), 6 clue holder sleeves, 1 answer holder sleeve, 6 unsharpened pencils, 6 playing pieces, 1 30-sided letter die and decal sheet, 6 scorepads, 1 timer

YOU'LL NEED: A pencil sharpener

SUGGESTED RETAIL PRICE: $29.97, $14.97 for expansion packs

AWARDS WON: NAPPA Gold Award, Homeschool.com Educational Gift Award, Creative Child Preferred Choice Award, National Parenting Center Seal of Approval, and more!

TRY IF YOU LIKE: Scrabble, Boggle, Word Puzzles

PERFECT FOR: word-game fans who really struggle with anagrams and would like to improve their ability to find them.

RATING: Four mixed-up words out of five.