What it is: A reverse of the game catchphrase. Instead of one person talking while everyone else guesses, it’s the opposite; everyone talks while one person guesses. (Head on over to catchphrase if you don’t know how to play.)

Best for: 5 to 10 players

What you need: 

• A list of catchphrase words or, even better, an app or website like my word generator would be really handy.
• A chalkboard, dry erase board, or TV screen to display words on

How to play: First, your setup. You need some surface to display words on where everyone in the room can see it, except for one person who will sit with their back to the word. We’ll call that person Dave.

If you have a board to write on, have Dave sit with his back to it and have a list of words ready to write on the board.

We’ve played before with my word generator app and an Apple TV. We just Airplay the app up to the TV so it’s easy to tap and display new words. (If you have an Android you can also cast to, for example, a Google Chromecast.) Dave would sit or stand to the side of the TV, with his back to it.

As part of your set up, you can also divide your players into two teams.

Dave’s team goes first and, as said, sends Dave up to sit with his back to the TV (or board). Write or display your first word on the board or screen, say “go,” and start a 30-second or 1-minute timer. Dave’s team reads the first word, which is “monster.” Then they all try as fast as they can, with talking only and no acting, to get Dave to guess the word.

• “A big hairy thing that chases kids and hides in closets!”
• “Sulley and Mike from that Pixar movie!”
• “Kids are scared this is hiding under their bed!”
• “Oscar and Elmo and Grover from Sesame Street are all…”

It will probably be pretty crazy, as you can imagine, with everyone shouting. Just like in regular catchphrase, players aren’t allowed to say any form of the word “monsters” or any word that contains “monsters” (like Monsters, Inc.).

As soon as Dave says “monster,” write or show a new word on the board or screen. Everyone keeps going until the timer runs out. Then tally up the points Dave’s team got (the number of words they guessed correctly) and let the other team have a turn.

It’ll be crazy and include a lot of shouting, but that’s all part of the fun!

For a list of word ideas to use, check out my online word generator or download the app (available for iOS or Android), or visit the catchphrase post or the printables page for some PDFs you can download.

Variations: Catchphrase, of course, is a variation. The game celebrities also has some catchphrase elements to it.

Best for: Teens and above, and at the very least six players (preferably more like 12). You also need an even number of players and one player to be the referee.

What you need:

• A playing area: somewhere large and flat like a gym, a large room, or a big slab of concrete
• A way to mark squares on the floor. Painter’s tape or masking tape is great for this (or chalk if you’re outside).
• A pen and paper to keep score
• Optional: A way to distinguish teams from one another. Three bandanas of one color and three of another (or scrimmage vests in two colors) would work great for this.

How to play: First, prepare your playing area.

You want a giant human-sized tic-tac-toe board on the ground. You can start by taping out your typical tic-tac-toe board with strips of tape. Aim to have each square about 3 feet by 3 feet.

Now, in the middle of each of your nine squares, tape a smaller rectangle, just big enough to hold one pair of feet.

If you want, you can skip the first step and forego the long tape lines. The most important part is a 3 by 3 grid of small rectangles just big enough for one person to stand in. Also, tape two lines parallel to and on opposite sides of the grid, spaced a few feet back from the grid:

Next, prepare your players.

First divide them into two even teams. If you have scrimmage vests to wear, assign each team a color and have them put on their vests. Next, give each player a number. Assign a number 1 on each team, a number 2 on each team, a number 3 on each team, and so on. So each player will have, on the opposing team, a counterpart with a matching number. Each player needs to remember his or her number. You as a referee might want to write down the numbers on a piece of paper so you know which numbers are assigned to players.

Have the teams stand behind the lines on opposite sides of the grid, like this:

If you’re playing with bandanas, assign each team a color and put the bandanas on the floor between the teams and the grid.

As a referee, sit or stand off to the side so you can clearly see the grid and both teams. Now you’re ready to start!

To begin, call out three numbers. The three players with those numbers on each team run forward, grab a bandana (if you have bandanas), and try stand on open squares to form a three in a row. The first team to get three in a row wins! With two teams competing for open spots, though, there’s a fair amount of running, teamwork, and communication involved. Still, it shouldn’t take more than a few seconds until one team has made three in a row.

The only row teams are not allowed to use is the one closest to them:

Any other row of three is fair game, for example:

Once one team has scored, mark them a point, send all the players back, put the bandanas back on the ground, and call three more numbers for the next round.

It’s handy to have all the players’ numbers written down because you can mark how many times you call each number so all the players get an even amount of playing time.

The bandanas or scrimmage vests are handy because they make it very easy for players to see and remember whose team they’re on. If you’re using bandanas, players can also hold their bandanas up in the air as soon as they form a row of three, making it easier for you as referee.

After a while you can change up teams, if you like. At the end of your desired playing time, tally up the points and declare a winner!

It’s a simple game, rule wise, with enough strategy to keep it interesting but fast-paced enough to keep it fun. It’s a great game for a big youth group to play.

Enjoy!

Variations: Another variation of the classic tic-tac-toe is 3D triple-decker tic-tac-toe. Ultimate tic-tac-toe brings even more strategy to the game.

Happy spring! I love springtime so much. Winter is great, but personally, after Christmas is over I’m just looking forward to when everything will be green again. And the wonderful season of spring is finally here.

If you’re looking to play pictionary or charades to celebrate this beautiful season, maybe just in time for Easter, hopefully this printable word list of springtime-related words below will help you out. Just click the link and print! These words have also been added to the word generator if you want to use the word list online without printing.

Happy spring and happy playing!

Springtime pictionary list

What it is: A funny variation of telephone, played on paper instead of out loud. It’s a great game for creative teens or adults and can be quite entertaining. It’s always been a favorite among my family and friends.

Best for: Group of about 6 to 10.

What you need: Each player will need a piece of paper and a pencil or pen to write/draw with.

How to play: First set up the game by sitting all of your players in a circle indoors. This game might be hard to play around a table because each player needs to keep their paper secret from their neighbors, so playing in a living room on couches and chairs works great.

Then hand out paper and writing utensils to all the players. Have everyone write his or her name in small print at the bottom right of the page.

Everyone starts by writing a sentence at the top of his or her paper. It can be something random, true, abstract, from a song lyric, or about someone in the room. Here are some examples:

• The kids all danced around the large oak tree.
• The dog chased the carefree butterflies to the end of the rainbow.
• If all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops, oh what a world it would be!
• Ted can’t find the right shoes to wear to prom.

Once everyone has a sentence at the top of his or her paper, everyone passes their paper to the player to their right.

Then everyone illustrates the sentence give to them with a small picture right underneath the sentence. So, for example, if Mary were given the sentence “The kids all danced around the large oak tree,” she might draw something like this:

Once everyone has finished drawing their sentences, everyone folds the top part of the paper over so it covers the first sentence, but not the picture. Then again, everyone passes their papers to the right.

Now everyone receives a paper with just a drawing visible, and everyone writes the sentence that presumably could have led to that picture (usually with some humor thrown in). For example, Bob, given the above picture, might write this sentence underneath: “Once there was a family of tree huggers.” Then everyone folds over their paper so only the last sentence is visible and passes the paper to the right.

And that’s basically how the game works. Everyone continues alternately writing sentences and drawing pictures, always covering up everything but the latest sentence or picture and passing to the right. Continue writing and drawing until you run out of room, or until everyone gets his or her paper back (that’s why you wrote names at the bottom at the beginning).

After everyone’s done writing and drawing, everyone unfolds the paper he or she has and begins to read and laugh at all the sentences and drawings, especially how in the world the first sentence turned into the last one. Then you can go around the circle one by one as everyone reads a paper out loud, or you can just pass them around so everyone can see the drawings clearly.

And then play another round!

Strategies: Really, the point of the game is to evoke laughter, so good strategies include being creative and off-the-wall with your sentences and pictures. Oh, and don’t worry, no artistic talent is required. It’s always kind of funny (or against the rules, depending on your viewpoint) when someone writes a sentence about a picture and throws in something that wasn’t there before, just to heighten the random factor. And when we play, most papers inevitably end up about people in the room, even if they don’t start out that way.

Example game

This game might be hard to visualize if you’ve never played it before, so here’s an example from a real-live game, to show you how one sentence can turn into a picture that can turn into a totally new sentence and on and on:

The kids all danced around the large oak tree.

Once there was a family of tree huggers.

After watching Fern Gully, Mrs. Mullen’s fourth grade class hurried out to the playground for a live reenactment.

The boys saw a picture of a girl and ran frantically to the park.

Many thanks to my sister and cousins for letting me use their artwork.

You can see some other game samples here.

What you need: Words to guess (either written down on strips of paper, or perhaps generated by a handy online word generator someone made) and a timer.

How to play: The point of the game is to get your team members to guess the target word by explaining the word to them out loud. The trick is, you can’t say the word (or any variant of the word) or you lose the round.

So to start, prepare a bunch of words or phrases on slips of paper (see below for some pre-made printable word lists, or use my online word generator). You could divide these into categories (famous people, foods, sports, household items, animals) or just mix them all together.

Put your papers into a bowl or hat and then situate all your players. Divide everyone up into two teams and have everyone sit in a circle, alternating members from each team (if you can find a way to divide teams like boys versus girls, then it’s good because it’s very easy to remember who’s on your team).

Choose one player, like Marty, to start. Marty takes the bowl of words, draws one, and immediately starts to describe it while at the same time someone starts the timer (for as much time as you all choose). As soon as Marty starts describing, his team members can start shouting out guesses (while the opposing team stays silent/watches the timer). Marty can say anything as long as it’s not the word written on the paper or any variant of the word. (The opposing team members sitting next to Marty can look over his shoulder and make sure he doesn’t say any words he’s not allowed to.)

Say Marty’s first word is baseball bat.

He could say:

“A long wooden thing you use to play a sport!”

However, he could not say:

“A long wooden thing you use to play baseball!”

Or even:

“A long wooden thing you use to hit a ball!”

Because he can’t say any variant of anything written on the slip of paper. Marty could get creative, though, and say something like:

“The mammal that has wings and is black and flies around at night eating insects!”

And when his team members shout, “bat!” he could say:

“Okay, that same word, but used to describe something long and wooden you use in a sport!”

As Marty’s team members guess, he can provide feedback and keep talking, as long as he doesn’t say any word on the paper.

Speed is definitely the key, because Marty’s goal is to get through as many words as he can before the timer runs out. Each word his team guesses correctly gets them a point. When the timer runs out, pass the bowl to the next person in the circle, and they get a turn to draw words and describe them while their team guesses. Play moves like this around the circle, with lots of describing and shouting out answers involved. It’s a lot of fun.

The team with the most points in the end wins. You can have players just save their papers until the end to count points, or have someone write down the score after each round, for those players who like to know they’re winning (or not).

Rules: Rhyming words are not allowed as clues. So, for example, if the word were plum and someone tried to use the word chum to get a teammate to guess it, that would be against the rules, because plum and chum have no clear relation except for the fact that they rhyme. The same goes for using clue words simply because they have the same first letter as the word. (So if the word were plum, saying, “Princess! Poultry! Pumpkin!” and accentuating the “p” sound would be against the rules.)

Strategies: Since speed is so important in this game, the faster you can give hints that will help your team members guess, the better. Well-known phrases or song lyrics are great, for instance. For example, if the word were snowman, instead of saying: “Something kids build in the winter that’s in the shape of a human…” you could just shout: “Frosty the…” and everyone would (hopefully) immediately shout “Snowman!”

Variations: You can choose to allow or prohibit skipping words (say if you draw one that’s just way too hard to describe or a word you don’t know the definition of). If you’re playing with younger players, maybe allowing passing is a good idea. But if you’re hardcore, maybe it’s not.

Also, you could play with a shorter time limit (maybe 10 seconds or so) and let each player describe only one word per turn. If they guess it, great; the turn ends, the team gets a point, and it’s the next player’s turn. If they don’t, too bad; no points for them that round. Just experiment to find out the best time limit for your group.

One fun rule to make it more challenging is to try to get people to guess the word by saying as few words as possible, like one or two. You could get more points the fewer words you used, if you really wanted to keep score.

Oh, and once I was playing catchphrase with my family and it was getting a little easy, so my sister suggested that each person had to use a random pre-selected word in each clue. The word we chose was “banana.” So, for example, if the word was baseball bat, we’d say something like, “This is kind of shaped like a banana in that it’s long and skinny…” Or if the word were tiptoe, we’d say something like “If you’re in a room with a lot of banana peels all over the floor, you might walk like this.” It was a kind of fun way to keep the game interesting, creative, challenging, and a little silly.

The game password is also a four-person variation of the game.

Printables: For your catchprase-playing pleasure, here are some ready-to-go word lists for you! Just click a list to open it, print it out, and then cut along the lines to create pre-made paper word slips. Or, for an even bigger list of words, check out my online game word generator, perfect if you’re playing with a laptop, iPod, or iPad handy.

Catchphrase Word List – Easy Words

Catchphrase Word List – Easy Words 2

Catchphrase Word List – Medium Words

Catchphrase Word List – Hard Words

Catchphrase Word List – Animals

Catchphrase Word List – Food

Catchphrase Word List – Household Items

Catchphrase Words – People

Catchphrase Words – Travel

Hopefully these word lists help you out, but if you like playing catchphrase, I’d recommend buying the electronic version of the real game. It’s a lot easier to play and keep score, and it has a ton of words. It makes the game a lot more fun.

What it is: A big-group indoor memory and guessing game. Entertaining and great for teens or adults.

Best for: A big group of at least 10 people.

What you need: A slip of paper for each person to write on, pens to write with, and a hat or bowl to collect your slips of paper.

How to play: First, pass out the pens and paper and have everyone secretly write a name on their slip. It can be any name – usually a celebrity or famous character, but it could be a made-up name too. Mostly, it should be a name that other players wouldn’t immediately associate with you (this is an important part of the strategy of winning the game).

Players fold up their slips of paper and put them all in a bowl or hat. Then one player (who, to avoid giving him or her an unfair advantage, shouldn’t be particularly good at identifying the others’ handwriting) goes through and reads all the names out loud, probably a couple of times, just to make sure that everyone knows all of the names. Players should listen carefully when the names are read aloud, because that’s the last time they’ll hear them.

Then the game can start. At first, it’s every man for himself, and the object for each player is to form the biggest “corporation” by pulling other players onto their team. Players take turns guessing which name another player wrote. If the guess is correct, the guesser gets that player on his or her corporation. If the guess is incorrect, the guessed player gets a turn to guess somebody else’s name.

So let’s set up a sample game to illustrate. Alyssa, Jared, and Savannah are three players playing with their friends. The players just heard all of the written-down names read aloud, including the names Socrates, Grace Kelly, and Bob.

Alyssa is selected to start. She starts by guessing which name one of the other players wrote on their slip of paper. So she would say something like, “Jared, are you Grace Kelly?” If Jared didn’t write Grace Kelly on his paper, he would say, “nope,” and then it would be Jared’s turn to guess. He might say, “Savannah, are you Bob?” Say Savannah did write down the name Bob on her paper. She says yes, and then she joins Jared’s “corporation,” or becomes part of his team. For the rest of the game, Jared and Savannah will work together  – they can confer and help each other, but ultimately Jared is the boss of the corporation (and the winner of the game if his corporation wins).

So after Savannah joins Jared’s corporation, Jared (and now Savannah) would get another chance to guess. After conferring with Savannah, Jared might say, “Alyssa, are you Socrates?”

Also, if sometime later in the game, Alyssa guessed Jared’s name, that means that Alyssa gets Jared and Savannah on her corporation.

So you can see that memory is a very important skill. First, it’s important for players to remember the names that were read off at the beginning. (There’s usually always one name, something common or nondescript, that manages to slip everyone’s memory until the end. The player who wrote down that name is lucky and has a good shot of winning.) It’s also important for players to remember who guessed what. Also, the bigger a corporation gets, the better they usually get, because there are more people conferring and helping each other guess.

It’s fun to watch the dynamics of the game, and each round will be different: sometimes it might be one giant corporation against another, or other times it might be one pretty big corporation against a lot of mom-and-pop businesses (one- or two-group teams who have managed to avoiding getting guessed out by the larger corporations). In the end, there will be one giant corporation with one player at the head, and that player is the winner.

Strategies: Mind games can play an important role in strategy. For example, if Jared wrote down the name Socrates, he might want to guess, when it’s his turn, “Jeremiah, did you write down Socrates?” Jared would know the answer would be no, of course, but it might confuse the other players. (“His name must not be Socrates because he asked Jeremiah if that was his name…”)

A lot of mind-reading and interpretation will probably happen as players try to guess which name was written down by who. So one of the best things you can do to win is write down a name that no one will associate with you (but not so obviously opposite as to attract attention).

What it is: A simple game for big groups, easy enough for young kids, and also entertaining for older kids and adults.

Best for: A big group of at least 8 players.

What you need: Enough chairs for all of your players (minus one) and an open room big enough to hold all of the chairs in a circle.

How to play: First you’ll want to assign each player a fruit. Depending on the number and age of the players, you can do this several different ways. If you have young players or a smaller group, you might want to assign the fruits yourself, labeling players as strawberry, orange, apple, etc. Instruct players to remember their fruit. It’s okay (in fact, preferable) if multiple people have the same fruit, so you might use only two or three fruits.

If you’re playing with a large group of older players, you might let everyone choose his or her own fruit. Again, it’s okay (even preferable) if more than one person has the same fruit, but you might get someone who’s the only one with his or her fruit, and that’s okay, too. (It’ll probably be the creative quirky guy who chooses kumquat or something like that.)

Next set up the game by arranging all the chairs in a big circle and having everyone sit in a chair. One player will be left standing – say it’s Geoffrey. He’s It. Geoffrey starts the game by calling out the name of a fruit, like “strawberries!” As soon as he calls out a fruit name, any player sitting in the circle assigned to that fruit would jump up and try to find a new seat. Geoffrey would also try as fast as he could to sit in one of the open seats. In the end, a player (hopefully not Geoffrey) would be left without a seat. That player would then call out another fruit and the game continues.

If you have some players that are the only ones assigned to their fruit (like the kumquat guy), it would be a good idea to have Geoffrey call out more than one fruit. That way if Geoffrey called out “kumquat!,” the kumquat guy wouldn’t feel all alone and hurt because he wouldn’t have anyone else’s chair to take and would be forced to be It. In a case like this, you can make a rule that the person in the middle always calls out two fruits, or you could leave it up to the person to call out however many fruits he or she wanted.

You can also call out fruits by saying things like, “Any fruit that is red” or “Fruits with pits” or “Berries,” phrases that describe multiple fruits.

Either way you play, at any time, the player in the middle also has the option of calling out “Fruit basket!” When that happens, all players get up from their chairs and find a new one. Mass pandemonium and good fun ensues as everyone tries not to be left without a seat. The game continues until you want to stop.

Rules: You can set a rule that a player getting up from a chair must find a new one at least two seats away (to encourage players to get up and run around). Also, if you’re halfway through your game and realize that there’s one or two fruits that no one’s calling because everyone’s forgotten about them (like that kumquat guy), you might want to remind everyone of everyone’s fruit.

Variations: There’s a get-to-know-you version of this game played with traits instead of fruits. The fruit basket game is also similar to another game, castles and beavers, in a lot of ways, except you’re inside instead of running around outside. Both are a lot of fun.