Charades Generator

How to play charades with this page

1. Make two teams of two or more (the team generator splits a list of names fairly). Pick the categories and the difficulty that suit your youngest player.
2. The actor takes the phone, reads the card and presses Hide word, so they can hold the phone up or put it down without anyone seeing. With a timer on, press Start.
3. Act it out without a sound: no talking, no mouthing, no spelling letters in the air and no pointing at a thing in the room. Their team shouts guesses.
4. A right guess scores a point; tap the card (or swipe it) for the next word and pass the phone to the other team. The deck is shuffled once and deals every word before any word comes back, so nobody gets “Snowman” three times in one evening. When it is used up the page says so and shuffles a fresh round.

The classic signals save a lot of flailing: hold up fingers for the number of words, then fingers again for which word you are acting; tap fingers on your forearm for the number of syllables; cup a hand behind your ear for “sounds like”; crank an old film camera for a film and open your palms like a book for a book; pinch finger and thumb together for a short word like “the”.

How to play the drawing game

Choose Drawing game and every card says DRAW. The drawer gets 60 seconds (the 90-second timer is kinder for younger children) and a pen and paper or a whiteboard. No letters, no numbers and no symbols like an arrow pointing at a word: only pictures. Their team guesses aloud. Choose Both to mix the two games, and each card says whether to act or to draw it.

Questions

What are good Christmas charades ideas?

Untick every category but Christmas and you have 112 words. The easy ones work for any age: Snowman, Reindeer, Christmas cracker, Present, Sledging. The medium ones are little scenes: Wrapping a present, Building a snowman, Leaving a mince pie for Santa, Carol singers, Snow angel. The hard ones make grown-ups laugh: Untangling the fairy lights, Shaking a present to guess it, Trying to stay awake for Santa, Christmas tree falling over. Add Films and books for Home Alone, The Polar Express, Jingle All the Way, White Christmas and A Christmas Carol.

Thanksgiving charades and drawing words for kids and adults

Press All / none to clear the categories, then tick Thanksgiving: 61 words of our own, 20 easy, 24 medium and 17 hard. For children, keep Easy and tick Only picture cards: Pumpkin, Pumpkin pie, Acorn, Leaf, Corn, Pilgrim hat and Roast turkey each have a drawing, so a four-year-old can play from the picture alone. The medium cards are scenes that both kids and adults can act: Carving the turkey, Breaking the wishbone, Raking leaves, Watching the parade, Kids’ table. The hard cards are for the grown-ups’ end of the table: Food coma, Black Friday queue, Seating the relatives, Turkey still frozen on Thanksgiving morning. Tick Add the grown-ups set for nine more, such as Politics at the dinner table and Explaining your job to Grandma again; they are cheeky, never crude. A mixed table plays well in teams of kids and adults together, with a younger child acting the picture cards while an older partner draws the scenes; the drawing game needs only paper and a pen per team. A 60 second timer suits most players and 90 seconds suits under-sixes. If you print, 8 cards per sheet on US Letter (98 × 65 mm) leave room on the table between the plates; with 61 Thanksgiving words, that is 8 sheets for the whole set.

Halloween charades and drawing words for kids and adults

Press All / none to clear the categories, then tick Halloween: 77 words of our own, 29 easy, 28 medium and 20 hard. For children, keep Easy and tick Only picture cards: Ghost, Witch hat, Cauldron, Broomstick, Candy, Jack-o’-lantern, Black cat, Full moon, Spider web, Mummy, Haunted house, Magic wand and Bone each have a line drawing, so a child who cannot read yet acts what they see. The easy words are mostly costumes a child already knows how to be (Witch, Vampire, Zombie, Superhero, Saying boo). The medium cards are scenes that are funny to watch: Carving a pumpkin, Flying on a broomstick, Mummy walking, Bobbing for apples, Ghost floating through a wall. The hard cards suit teenagers and adults: Jump scare, Witching hour, Things that go bump in the night, Answering the door to trick-or-treaters. Tick Add the grown-ups set for nine more for a grown-ups’ party, such as Costume malfunction and Eating the trick-or-treat candy yourself. Nothing in the Halloween words is gory, and there are no film or brand characters, so the deck suits a class party as well. For the drawing game, the picture words are the quickest to sketch inside a 60 second timer. To print, press Print cards and then Download PDF: at 8 cards per sheet, the 77 Halloween cards fill 10 sheets; pick Easy only and Only picture cards for a single 2-sheet set of 13 picture cards for little ones.

Charades for kids who cannot read yet

Tick Only picture cards. The deck becomes the 173 easy words that have a picture (a dog, a rocket, a snowman, brushing your teeth), so a three- or four-year-old looks at the drawing and acts it. On paper, choose 8 cards per sheet: each picture is then about 25 mm tall. Little children need no timer, and a whispered hint from a grown-up is part of the fun. Animals are the easiest category for under-fives: they can make the noise as well, if your house rules allow it.

Charades words for adults, and for the whole family

For a mixed table, leave all categories on with Easy and Medium (the default): everyone can act Walking the dog, and the medium cards (Ironing a shirt, Flipping a pancake) give the grown-ups something to work at. Add Hard for teenagers and adults: Parallel parking, Assembling flat-pack furniture. For an adults’ party, add Hard and tick Add the grown-ups set: 55 extras such as Speed dating, Office Christmas party and Pretending to like a present. They are cheeky, never crude, so a teenager in the room is not a problem.

Can I use these words for Pictionary-style drawing games?

Yes: these are words for Pictionary-style drawing games too. The easy and medium words draw best (Igloo, Lighthouse, Hot air balloon); hard words such as Brain freeze or Stage fright are better acted than drawn.

Printing the cards

Press Print cards. Eight cards per sheet are 95 × 69 mm on A4 and 98 × 65 mm on US Letter; twelve per sheet are 63 × 69 mm and 65 × 65 mm. They sit inside a 10 mm margin that home printers do not clip, with dashed lines to cut along. Print at 100% (“Actual size”) on ordinary paper, or on card (160 to 200 g/m²) if the deck will be used every Christmas. Each card has its ACT or DRAW badge, a small category mark in the corner and one to three dots for the difficulty. All prints every word in your filter once, in shuffled order: the whole family-safe bank is 845 words, about 106 sheets at 8 per sheet, so most people print one to three sheets per game.

Is it free, and is anything sent anywhere?

It is free, with no sign-up and no watermark. The words were written for this page, and the pictures are our own line drawings; the ones the word search maker already draws are shared with it. The deck, the PDF and the PNG are all made in your browser, and nothing about your game leaves the page.