How to Play Charades - Tips & Tricks (and Word List!)

Everybody knows this game, and there's a reason why it's so popular. Charades is a classic games night choice because it can get super silly super fast. The game requires you to stand up in front of everyone, and act out a book title, famous person, movie title etc. This instantly breaks the ice and puts people outside of their comfort zones. Although you may not be comfortable acting in front of people (even your friends or family), once you realize frantically waving your hands around with crazed facial expressions is all part of the fun, you won't be able to resist joining in!

How to play Charades

Notepad and pen to keep track of the scores
Charades phrases, either written them out yourself or you can use the word list included below
Stopwatch to keep time (your phone usually has a built-in timer)

Here are the rules of charades:

Choose a player to start. The player thinks of a word that the others should be familiar with.
The player then acts the word or phrase they've chosen in front of the other players
The first person to guess the word or phrase gets a point

And that's it! I told you the rules were simple, but that doesn't mean the game isn't fun. If you have a large group of people, you can also play as teams. The two teams guess the same word and the first team to guess their word correctly wins.

Play Charades on Brightful

The best way to play Charades is through Brightful. It’s one of many games available that you and your colleagues, friends, and family can play together during your next video call. It's easy to set up, you can play through any device and there are no downloads necessary. Just act out the words that appear on your screen during your ongoing video call, and see who can guess the most words correctly!

Common clues used in Charades

Struggling on how to act out words while playing Charades? Here are some recommendations on how to act out any prompts you may come across, and to give fellow players the best chance to guess what word you are trying to communicate.

For multiple words, hold up how many words with your fingers. Then hold up one finger to indicate you are acting the first word, two for the second etc.
To indicate something involving reading, pretend to read a book.
To indicate a musical instrument, pretend to play it.

More rules for playing Charades

If you want to offer a more unique or challenging Charades experience that will test everyone, here are some ideas.

Players from each team take turns acting out words for their teammates
Winner takes all: the player with the most points at the end wins
Make harder or complex words worth more points
Maintain a theme among the words chosen (e.g: all words are related to school/work/travel)

Charades Words List

To help you get started, here's a massive list of words that you can act out. They are all ranked from easy to hard: easy words being simple to act out, whereas more difficult words will require a bit more creative thinking to communicate them non-verbally. Simply pick one at random, choose one that you like, or pick a few to create your next Charades game!