Charades Cards: Replace Them, Make Your Own or Go Digital

You found the box, but half the charades cards are missing. Or the cards are all there and your group can recite every one of them. Either way you end up in the same place: you need a fresh set of words, and you need it tonight.

Why charades cards run out

• Memorization. A boxed game has a limited number of cards. After ten game nights, people recognize the word from the first gesture.
• Wear and tear. Cards bend, get soda on them and rarely survive two moves intact.
• Missing pieces. The box is usually there with half its contents, and the timer never is.
• Wrong difficulty. Many decks are either too easy or so abstract that nobody wants to try.

How many charades cards do you need for one night?

Almost everyone underestimates this. A 60-second turn goes through 8-15 words, so a homemade deck runs out much sooner than you’d think.

How to make your own charades cards

1. 01Cut identical slips.A sheet of letter paper folded in half four times and cut gives you 16 slips. 3x5 index cards cut in half work even better. Same size matters, or the thicker slip stands out in the bowl.
2. 02One word per slip.Not three. One word, one guess, cleanest that way.
3. 03Mark the difficulty.A dot in the corner: one dot easy, two medium, three hard. That becomes your scoring.
4. 04Everyone writes.Each player writes ten. Nobody knows the whole deck, so nobody can memorize it.
5. 05Use separate bowls.One bowl per difficulty, so you know what you’re drawing before the turn starts.

What makes a good charades card?

• Concrete, not abstract. “Vacuum cleaner” is a good card. “Efficiency” is not.
• Short. Anything longer than four words eats a whole turn.
• Everyone knows it. If only half the group has heard of it, you don’t get a game, you get an argument.
• Works in every mode. A great card can be acted, described and drawn.
• Not personal. Inside jokes are great, but only if everyone is in on them. Otherwise someone is left out.

Charades card lists to copy

Here are four short lists you can copy straight onto slips. For a much bigger set, there are 1,000+ charades ideas by topic, and a list of charades words at three difficulty levels.

A phone instead of charades cards

Paper can’t do two things: shuffle randomly and keep time. So somebody always ends up mixing the bowl and staring at a clock instead of playing.

Your own words aren’t lost on a phone either: custom words you type into the app get shuffled in just like the built-in topics. At a team-building event or a wedding, that is often the best part.

Scoring with homemade charades cards

The difficulty dots do double duty. They tell the clue-giver what they are getting into, and they turn into points at the end of the turn. Keep the cards each team guessed in a pile in front of them, then count dots instead of cards.

Letting each clue-giver choose which bowl to draw from adds a bit of strategy. A team that is behind will start gambling on three-dot cards, which is exactly when the game gets fun.

Three games you can play with one deck of charades cards

• Three-round deck. Use the same pile of cards for three rounds: first describe freely, then use only one word per clue, then act silently. By round three everyone knows the deck, and that is the point: the clues get shorter and the laughs get bigger.
• Speed round. One minute, as many cards as possible, mixed difficulty. Good for the end of the night when attention is short.
• Draw-and-act. The clue-giver flips a coin: heads they act, tails they draw. Nobody can plan for one mode.

When paper cards are still better

• With kids. Writing the cards is a game in itself, and good practice.
• No power, no charger. At summer camp or around a campfire, paper is more reliable.
• As a gift. A handwritten deck for a wedding or a birthday is a better present than an app link.

Over 3,500 words in 22 topics, in random order, with a built-in timer. No card writing required.

Download free

Frequently asked questions