Forbidden Word: the team guessing game

Three roles: clue-giver, guessers and guardian

• The clue-giver is the only player on the active team who sees the card: the word to get across at the top, and below it the five forbidden words. The role rotates within the team, so sooner or later everyone has a go.
• The guessers are the clue-giver’s teammates: they see nothing, they listen and they shout out as many answers as they like.
• The guardian is an opponent who reads the card alongside the clue-giver and stops them the moment they say a forbidden word. The guardian does not award points: they only keep watch.

The rest of the opposing team listens in silence. A practical tip: explain the three roles before the first turn, then let the game teach you the rest. You will find more tricks for introducing a new game in How to explain the rules of a game to a group in two minutes. If you have played Taboo-style games before, you already know the core idea.

Teams, timer and deck: setting up

On a single phone you type in the players’ names and set up the game:

• Number of teams: from 1 to 4. With a single team you play cooperatively; with two or more you play against each other. Each team needs at least 2 players.
• Team line-up: automatic (the app shuffles and shares players out) or manual, tapping players to move them. You can rename the teams.
• Turn duration: 30, 45, 60 or 90 seconds; 60 by default.
• End of game: after a set number of rounds, from 1 to 10 turns per team, or when a team reaches a target score between 5 and 60.
• Deck: the default, Mixed, draws cards from every theme (food, sport, film and TV, animals, home, places, music, travel, technology, everyday life). Alternatively you can use your own word list, with cards you have written yourselves: one word and five forbidden words each.

The first clue-giver is drawn at random, so there is no need to argue about who goes first.

What happens during a turn

The turn starts with “Go!” and from then on the team tries to guess as many cards as possible before time runs out. Each card has exactly one of three outcomes:

• Correct: a teammate says the exact word. The team earns 1 point and the next card appears straight away.
• Forbidden: the clue-giver said one of the forbidden words. The card is lost and scores 0, but no points are taken away.
• Pass: the card is too hard and you move on. It scores 0 and there is no limit on passes: the only cost is time.

When time runs out, a card left half-explained does not count. The app shows a summary of the turn (correct, forbidden, passed) and the updated scoreboard, then it is the next team’s turn with a new clue-giver.

When the game ends

If you play by rounds, the game ends once every team has played its turns. If you play to a target score, it ends when a team reaches it, but only at the end of the current round: that way every team has had the same number of turns. The team with the most points wins; if teams are level at the top, the app declares a draw.

Sixty seconds with the Owls, card by card

The Owls (Liam, Maya and Jess) take on the Foxes (Tom, Ellie and Sam). Liam is giving clues; Tom, from the Foxes, sits next to him as guardian. Someone presses “Go!”.

1. Pizza (forbidden: oven, margherita, tomato, mozzarella, slice). Liam: “Round, you order it on a Saturday night, Naples is very proud of it.” Maya: “Pizza!” Correct, 1 point.
2. Umbrella (forbidden: rain, open, wet, handle, shelter). Liam starts with “You put it up when it’s raining…” and Tom stops him: “raining” is a form of “rain”. Forbidden, card lost.
3. Giraffe (forbidden: neck, tall, spots, savannah, Africa). “Animal with stripes? No, patches… eats the leaves at the very top of trees.” Jess: “Giraffe!” That makes 2 points.
4. Password. Liam freezes for a few seconds and decides to pass: 0 points, no penalty.
5. Library (forbidden: books, quiet, read, shelves, borrow). “You go with a card, take a novel home and bring it back later.” Maya tries “Bookshop?”, Liam shakes his head: “Free!” “Library!” That makes 3.

Time runs out while Liam is describing the sixth card, which does not count. Summary: 3 correct, 1 forbidden, 1 passed, 3 points for the Owls. Now it is the Foxes’ turn, and the guardian will be one of the Owls.

One phone passed around, or a room with separate roles

With a single phone, before each turn the app announces the team and the clue-giver, who should be handed the phone, and reminds you that an opponent must watch the screen. The same phone records the outcomes: Correct, Forbidden or Pass. In cooperative play there is no guardian and the clue-giver polices themselves, on trust.

In a room everyone uses their own device, joining with the code or the QR code, and the roles become different screens:

• The clue-giver sees the card on their phone and marks Correct or Pass; the guardian, chosen in rotation from the next team, sees the same card on their own phone and is the only one who can mark Forbidden.
• The clue-giver’s teammates see only who is giving clues and a prompt to shout out the answer; the opponents see the timer and the score. The turn’s words only become visible to everyone in the summary.
• You need at least 4 players and 2 to 4 balanced teams: cooperative play exists only on a single phone. Rooms always play by rounds, from 1 to 5 per team.
• The host starts each turn and, if needed, can end it early with the button to finish the turn.

How to describe well and how to handle fouls

• Read the forbidden words first, then the word. Knowing what you cannot say stops you from launching into the wrong sentence.
• Use situations and opposites: “the opposite of…”, “you find it in…”, “you use it when…” work better than synonyms, which are often on the forbidden list anyway.
• Pass early. Ten seconds spent on an impossible card cost more than one lost card.

The app does not listen: fouls are judged by the guardian. Arguments almost always start over related forms (“opened” for “open”, “raining” for “rain”), words in other languages, gestures and rhymes. Agree on these cases before you start: the most common choice is to treat words from the same family as forbidden too. During the turn the guardian decides, on the spot and without appeal; if you have doubts, talk them over once the turn is finished, not while the clock is running.

Which groups it works best for

The game rests on vocabulary: from about the age of 10, children can keep pace with adults. The most enjoyable format is two teams of 3 to 5 people: everyone takes part in every turn, some guessing and some keeping watch. With up to 16 players you can move up to three or four teams.

It is perfect after dinner, when the group is in the mood to make some noise (more ideas in Games for a dinner party). If you enjoy getting a word across without being allowed to say everything, try Charades too, where you cannot speak at all, or Trio Sync, where two of you build the description together, one word at a time.