‘I’m an absolute fiend at it’: why Judi Dench’s favourite game is brilliant for brains of all ages
If you were Dame Judi Dench, what role would you proudest of? M in James Bond? Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown? Reigning champion at Bananagrams? Yes, you read that right. The Oscar-winning actress and national treasure’s secret passion is for a family-friendly, travel-sized word game that comes in a banana-shaped pouch.
‘I play Bananagrams. I’m an absolute fiend at it,’ she’s on the record as saying. In fact, she’s such a huge fan that she once wrote the the foreword for a tips and tricks book titled Bananagrams! Secrets.
She’s not alone. Maggie Smith was reportedly a champion player, too. ‘I never win,’ Penelope Wilton once told told Hello! Magazine of the Banagrams tournaments cast members held on the set of Downton Abbey. ‘Maggie Smith and Laura Carmichael always do. It keeps you alert.’ And increasingly, the science backs her up. Here’s why you should take bananagrams on holiday with you this summer, whatever your age.
What is bananagrams?
Basically – a simplified version of Scrabble, without a board. Dump the tiles on a table, get each player to grab a set number and start building words that connect to each other. Once you’ve used all your tiles, replace them from the centre till none remain.
The brain-boosting benefits of boardgames
When the University of Edinburgh looked at the broad benefits of board and card games (real, old-fashioned ones that is, not digital ones) regular games-players were found to score better on memory and thinking skills by the time then reached their 70s. Even more striking, they found that those who increased their time playing board games in old age experienced less decline in memory and thinking speed.
Professor Ian Deary, Director of the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology (CCACE), said: ‘We and others are narrowing down the sorts of activities that might help to keep people sharp in older age. In our Lothian sample, it’s not just general intellectual and social activity, it seems; it is something in this group of games that has this small but detectable association with better cognitive ageing.’
Why word games are good for us
The Edinburgh study looked at a wide-ranging selection of games, including bingo. But others have focused more narrowly on word games.
For the young: studies have found that incorporating word games into classroom lessons significantly improves spelling accuracy, student engagement, and long-term vocabulary retention compared to traditional rote memorisation and textbook drills.
For older adults: Research involving more than 19,000 participants and led by the University of Exeter and King’s College London found that the more regularly adults aged 50 and over played puzzles, such as crosswords and Sudoku, the better their brain function.
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Why scrabble and bananagrams are even better
But scrabble and bananagrams don’t only exercise language and recall skills, they also ask you to manipulate space and that, it turns out, has additional benefits. As one 2016 study concluded: ‘scrabble experts made use of brain regions not generally associated with meaning retrieval in visual word recognition, but rather those associated with working memory and visual perception.’
In fact, according to researchers from the University of Calgary, expert scrabble players recognise and process words 20% faster than typical students. Playing scrabble, it is suggested, reshapes the brain by shifting word recognition away from standard language areas into regions used for visual processing and working memory. ‘The time and effort they put into scrabble has really changed their brains,’ summarised Dr. Penny Pexman, a professor of psychology at the university.
Randomized controlled trials also suggest that adding an element of time-pressure to word games – racing an opponent in Bananagrams, for instance – encourages your brain into faster neural network communication and visual scanning. Meanwhile, one 2020 study looked at bananagram’s impact on students’ language skills and found it improved spelling scores from 40% pre-intervention to 60% post-intervention.
A persuasive argument, then, to add it to your hand luggage before your summer holiday.
