Hum Charades

Materials Needed: A phone, or some way of writing down words/letters.

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.

Classic Version

Gameplay:

• The game is composed of rounds, in which each team member designates one actor.
• The actor of each team will be given a set of words to act, and the actor that acts out her set of words the fastest wins.
• The set of words is given to an actor, as depicted in the following “handshake”. Note that the handshake is performed twice, for each actor.

• To clarify the visual above, observe there are two teams, Team A and Team B, with actors Avni and Bentley respectively. Lets also suppose that the teams established a set of four categories ahead of time — Food, Animals, Cities, and Sports. Note that this game can be easily extended to any number of categories.
  1. The first step in the “handshake”, is that each team sends 4 letters to the other team. These letters are in essence chosen at random, and can form a word for fun, but it doesn’t really matter.
     • Team A sends the letters P L A Y and Team B sends W F T H.
  2. Next, here is where the strategic element comes in. Each team sends 4 words, where each word starts with a different letter and fits in a different category.
     • Team A sends the words: Pickleball (sport), Lamb chops (food), Amsterdam (city), and Yak (animal). Team B sends the words: Waterloo (city), Fencing (sport), Tortoise (animal), and Ham (food). Note the phrases send don’t need to be one word, but should convey one idea.
  3. Finally, the actors must act out the set of words they are given following charades rules, and they are timed to complete it. The team that guesses all the words the fastest wins.
     • We recommend starting the stopwatch right as the actor receives the words.
     • The actor cannot verbally state which category/letter she is acting
     • Note that is in both teams best interest to give the hardest possible words in step 2! Out of fairness, we play with the expectation that at least 2 members of the following team should know what the word/phrase is.
• Feel free to change the categories between rounds, here are some that we recommend, though any broad category would work just fine.
  • Food, Animals, Cities, Sports, Celebrities, Hobbies, Professions, Countries, Attire, Companies, Restaurants

Scattergories Version

• The scattergories version works very similarly to the above, but the handshake differs:
  1. Before the handshake, a scattergories list containing 12 categories is agreed upon to use for both teams. Here are a couple places online to find scattergories lists — 12 premade lists, random list generator, or just a google search,
     • The list below is decided upon:

  

  1. Each team chooses a set of 4 letters, 4 categories from the scattergories list, or a mix of the two, and sends that to the other team.
     • Team A selects the set: Letter: D, Letter: A, Category: Beverage, and Category: Sea Creature.
     • Team B decides to send all letters: Letter: C, Letter: D, Letter: E, and Letter: F
  2. Now, each team must form 4 words, each corresponding to a letter/category sent. If a letter is sent, then the resulting word must start with that letter, but can belong to any category. If a category is sent, then the resulting word must belong to that category, but can start with any letter. Note that categories and letters must be unique, i.e. you cannot use the same category/letter twice.
     • Team B sends the following where (sent) indicates that Team A sent it, and (chose) indicates that Team B chose that letter or category.
       1. Starting with Letter: D (sent) and belonging to Category: Movie (chose): Dumb and Dumber
       2. Starting with Letter: A (sent) and belonging Category: Something You Drive (chose): Audi
       3. Belonging to Category: Beverage (sent) and starting with Letter: C (chose): Coca Cola
       4. Belonging to Category: Sea Creature (sent) and starting with Letter: S (chose): Sea Anemone
     • Team A sends the following where (sent) indicates that Team B sent it, and (chose) indicates that Team A chose that letter or category.
       1. Starting with Letter: C (sent) and belonging to Category: Dessert (chose): Chocolate Cake
       2. Starting with Letter: D (sent) and belonging Category: Cartoon Character (chose): Daisy Duck
       3. Starting with Letter: E (sent) and belonging Category: City (chose): Eureka
       4. Starting with Letter: F (sent) and belonging Category: Free Activity (chose): Frolicking
  3. Same step 3 as previous version

A Scattergories Variant

• There are different ways scattegories lists can be used to produce the words! See a variant below:
  1. A scattergories list is chosen (see above).
     • We select the scattergories list above.
  2. Teams alternate choosing categories from the list for the words they want to receive. We recommend using a snake draft for teams to select the categories, where the order of selection reverses every round.
     • The picking is conducted as below:
       1. Team A has the first “pick” and chooses Category: Movie
       2. Team B has the next two picks, and chooses Category: Dessert and Category: Cartoon Character
       3. Team A selects Category: Something You Drive and Category: Beverage
       4. Team B selects Category: City and Category: Free Activity
       5. Team A selects Category: Sea Creature.
     • Then, Team B sends a word for each category the categories Movie, Something You Drive, Beverage, and Sea Creature, and Team A does the same for the categories Team B selected. Note that there is no restriction on having the words start with a given letter!
  3. Same step 3 as previous version.
• To make it easier, a letter can be decided on before/after the categories are selected, and all words given must start with that letter.

A Compound Word Variant

• Here is another clever way of coming up with words. Each team will think of any compound word, e.g. Starfish, and give the first word to the one of the other team’s actors, and the second word to another actor. Each word should be given privately, i.e. the actors don’t know their partner’s word. Note that each actor doesn’t know if they have the first part of the compound word, or the second part. Then, the game of hum charades proceeds as normal! To spice this up, you can:
  1. Think of multiple words, and give one part of each word to one member of another team. We played this with two teams of 4, and gave each member of the other team a word to act. This means that the acting teams will need to deduce what are the words.
     • For instance, if the words given to Alice, Bob, Charlie, and David are List, Water, White, and Fall, they must deduce that the two compound words are Whitelist and Waterfall.
     • Also note that in the case, the idle actors are guessing! One slight nuance here is that you shouldn’t be able to guess the compound word containing your word until after you acted. Intuitively, if the person currently acting is conveying Water, and you have Fall and haven’t acted yet, you shouldn’t be allowed to guess Waterfall.
  2. Instead, of just using traditional compound words, feel free to extend it to words that happen to be compound words, e.g. bandit (band + it), or even more non-traditional compound words! These are often much tougher to guess, and tons of fun to think of too!