Digging through old bookmarks I found this alternate ruleset for Bananagrams I want to share:
Turn all letter tiles face down, then each player takes 10 tiles (with 3 players take 14 tiles, with 5 players take 8). Someone says “GO” and everyone turns over their tiles and tries to build their own crossword using ALL their letters, no two letter words allowed. When someone finally finishes they say “DONE” and they get -1 to their final score marked on a scorepad. Now ALL players pick FOUR more tiles and again try to use them all with any left over from the last round. Players are allowed to mix up their words at any point in the game, add to them, etc just like Bananagrams. If no one can go out and all players agree, they skip scoring that round and pull 4 more tiles and carry on. This should rarely happen.
If at the time of picking someone has 3 tiles all the same, they can immediately and only at this time, throw the 3 tiles back and take 3 new ones.
This continues round by round until the tiles are gone, then whoever finishes first in the very last round gets -3 to their score instead of the usual -1.
Endgame Scoring: Each word is +3 to score and each unused tile is +2 to score. LONGEST word is -4, if tied look at next longest. Lowest score is the winner.
There is more than one strategy here. Fast and furious can win but also just making long words and as few as possible can win too, if you want to push your luck. I have seen games won where the person had 8 tiles left over (+16) but only had 3 words (+9) and ended up with the longest word (-4) and won the game. Played this way the game is fun, tense and addicting.
Reproduced with light editing from Houserule Jay @ BoardGameGeek