Fancy a game of charades?

Charades is a popular guessing game often played at parties or other social events. Teams of at least two players choose one team member to pantomime an unknown but familiar quotation, title, name or other short phrase. The other members of the team must declare the correct phrase in its entirety within a specified time limit to win a point. The opposite team must then do the same in order to win their own point. The team with the most points after a number of rounds is declared the winner. The prime directive in Charades is not to utter a sound while performing clues to the phrase in question.

The game of Charades has a number of rules to ensure fair play. Performers cannot provide any audible clues, such as the sound of a siren or the barking of a dog. Official sign language spellings or the pantomiming of actual letters is also against the rules.

To aid the performer during a round of Charades, there are a number of different gestures which can be used legally. The specific category of the clue can be indicated with an opening palm gesture for literature, a hand cranking motion for movies or the drawing of a square to indicate television, for example. Once the category has been established, the Charades performer can provide more specific clues to his or her team members.

In general, the performer will provide the total number of words in the phrase by displaying a corresponding number of fingers. A clue such as “Gone with the Wind,” for example, would receive a display of four fingers. The next gesture might reveal which of the words the performer will act out first. Typically, this will be a distinctive word or one that is easily acted out. The performer in our scenario might indicate the fourth word, wind, and act as if her or she were walking against a powerful breeze. A team member might successfully shout out the word “wind,” and others may blurt out movie titles ending in that word.

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