Reverse Charades Board Game: Rules for How to Play

Objective

The objective of Reverse Charades is to score the most points by having your team correctly guess the most words.

Set Up

The players should divide into two teams. You can choose any criteria you want to divide the players. Both teams should have as close to the same number of players as possible.
Shuffle the cards and place them face down in a stack on the table. Place the timer near the cards.
The players will decide whether they want to play a certain number of rounds or to a certain point total.
Choose which team will start the game. Both teams will get to play the same number of rounds.

How to Play Reverse Charades

The current team chooses a player to be the guesser for the round. The rest of the players on the team will be the actors. This role should rotate so the players play each role the same number of times.

When everyone is ready the timer is flipped over. One of the players on the other team takes the top card and flips it over. They will hold the card so only the actors on the other team can see what is written on the card. Once the actors see the card they will start to act it out. The actors have a lot of leeway in what they do. They can use objects in the room and other people. At no point can any of the actors talk to one another or the guesser. They also can’t mouth out the word without making a sound. Should the actors ever say or mouth out the word, the team loses a point.

Card for Reverse Charades — For this card the players have to act out playing tennis in order to get their teammate to guess the word. They could pretend to hit the ball back and forth with their invisible rackets.

While the actors are acting out what is on the card, the guesser is trying to figure out what they are acting out. They can make as many guesses as they want. Whenever the guesser guesses the word, the team scores a point.

The other team then reveals the next card and shows it to the actors. The actors can now start acting out this new word. The team can keep playing new cards until the timer runs out.

Once each turn the actors can decide to pass on a card. The card will be discarded and a new card will be drawn.

End of Round

The round ends when the timer runs out. The players count up how many words they correctly guessed during the round. They will score one point for each correctly guessed word. If the actors ever talked/mouthed a word, they will lose one point for each instance of it happening.

Scoring for Reverse Charades — During the round the current team was able to guess tennis, trombone, roller coaster and Tyrannosaurus Rex. These four cards score them four points. While trying to act out walkie-talkie, one of the players talked. The team loses one point for talking.

The teams writes down how many points they scored in the round. Play then passes to the other team.

Winning the Game

The game ends when either the agreed upon number of rounds have been played, or one of the teams reached the agreed upon number of points. Whichever team scores the most points wins the game.

Winning Reverse Charades — The top team scored 16 points while the bottom team scored 14 points. Since the top team scored more points, they have won the game.

Playing With Less Than Six Players

If there are less than six players, the game recommends altering the rules slightly.

Instead of splitting into two teams, each player plays by themselves. Each player takes a turn as a guesser while the rest of the players play as actors. During your turn you will have until the timer runs out to try and guess as many words as possible. The actors will try to act out the cards to help you try and guess the words. While the actors act the guesser holds the card so only the actors can see what is written on the card. When a word is guessed correctly, the guesser takes the card which scores one point at the end of the game. They will then draw and show a new card to the actors.

The players keep taking turns as the guesser until all of the players have had one turn as the guesser. The players then compare the number of words they were able to guess on their turn. Whichever player correctly guesses the most words wins the game.

Reverse Charades FAQ

If you have any questions about how to play the game, leave a comment below on this post. I will try to answer any questions asked as best and as quickly as possible.

Components

500 Words
60 Second Timer
Instructions

Year: 2010 | Publisher: The OP, RetroPlay LLC, Spin Master, USAopoly | Designer: Scott Porter, Bryce Porter | Artist: Ari Wong

Genres: Action, Party

Ages: 6+ | Number of Players: 6+ | Length of Game: 30 Minutes

Difficulty: Light | Strategy: Light | Luck: Moderate

For more board and card game rules/how to plays, check out our complete alphabetical list of card and board game rules posts.

Written By:

Eric Mortensen

Eric Mortensen is an owner and head writer on Geeky Hobbies since 2014. He is an avid board game player and collector with over 3,000 board and card games in his collection. Since 2014 he has written more than 1,100 board game how to play guides.