Convey

A mix of pictionary, charades, and taboo

Materials Needed: A phone, or some way of writing down words/letters. Some place to draw on.

Players: 4 or more.

Objective: Split into two teams, though the game can be extended for an aribtrary number of teams. The team that wins the most rounds wins.

Gameplay:

  • The game is composed of rounds, in which each team designates 2 conveyor, though it can be generalized to any number
  • The conveyors of each team will be given a set of 4 words to convey, and the team that guesses their words the fastest wins. As always, the number of words can be generalized to any number as well.
  • Note that we haven’t explained (1) how the set of 4 words is decided and (2) what conveying means, so let’s dive into both below:

Step 1. Deciding the 4 words

The 4 words can be decided in a variety of ways, and we will discuss a couple ways below, but we encourage you all to come up with your ways

1a. From a song
  1. Both teams collectively decide upon an album by a music artist, e.g. the most recent Taylor swift album.
  2. Each team randomly chooses a song in that album — a simple random number generator should do the trick.
  3. After choosing the song, the team must select 4 words in order in the song, and send them to the conveyors on the other team. The words should be in the same phrase, and not between sentences.
1b. From categories

See hum charades for different ways of choosing from categories.

Step 2. Conveying the words

  1. Upon receiving the 4 words, the conveyors have three means in which they can choose to convey the words:
    1. Acting: Use classic charades rules.
    2. Explaining: Verbally explaining a given word might be too easy, so we will copy the game Poetry for Neanderthals and restrict the explainer to only using one syllable words
    3. Drawing: Use classic pictionary rules.
      • Since 4 words are given, each of the above means must be used at least once, and one can be used twice. Since there are 2 conveyors, they will each convey two of the words, and they can decide amongst themselves which words they act, and which means they used for the word
      • We recommend starting the timer right as the set of 4 words is given to the other team’s conveyors, so the time the conveyors spend determining who conveys which words matters.