Charades Generator

This charades generator draws a random word, times the round and keeps the score — the three things a game of charades actually needs. Sixty charades words ship with it, split across easy, medium and hard, in kids, animals, movies and actions categories. Nothing is stored on a server and there is no sign-up.

How to Use the Charades Generator

1. Filter to the words you want. Tap as many difficulties and categories as you like — they combine, so Easy plus Medium across Animals leaves ten words. The note under the filters always says how many are in play.
2. Press Spin the wheel, or Instant pick for the random word button behaviour — no animation, straight to the word.
3. Show the card to the actor only. The wheel keeps its words hidden behind question marks, so nobody else can read ahead.
4. Start the timer and play the round. Thirty, sixty or ninety seconds.
5. Award the point and swap turns. Swap turn hands over and resets the clock in one press.

Everything is on a single screen on purpose. A game that needs one tab for charades words, another for a timer and a scrap of paper for the score stops being a game and starts being admin.

Easy, Medium and Hard Words

Every word carries a difficulty, and the wheel is colour coded by it: green for easy, amber for medium, red for hard. That means you can see the mix at a glance before you spin.

Mixing difficulties in one game is the usual mistake. If one team draws “Cat” and the other draws “Conducting an orchestra”, the score stops meaning anything. Set the charades generator to a single difficulty for the whole game, or alternate deliberately so both teams get one of each.

Using the Charades Generator for Kids

Children need shorter words, shorter rounds and fewer options to choose from. Filtering to Easy and Kids leaves five words on the wheel, which is the right size for a six-year-old: long enough to feel random, short enough that they are not overwhelmed.

• Use a thirty-second round. A minute is a long time when you are seven and the room is shouting at you.
• Let them see the word with an adult. Reading “Brush teeth” under pressure is its own obstacle; whispering it to them removes a barrier that has nothing to do with the game.
• Drop the scoreboard for younger children and just play. The tool works perfectly well with the score left at zero.
• Move to Medium once Easy gets boring, usually faster than you expect.

For a classroom rather than a living room, the classroom randomiser hub has tools for picking which student goes next and splitting a class into teams, which pair naturally with this one.

Categories: Kids, Animals, Movies and Actions

Four categories ship with the tool, and they do genuinely different jobs.

Actions is the category to reach for when the group is mixed in age or comes from different places. Nobody is disadvantaged by not having seen a film.

The Round Timer

A charades generator without a clock leaves one argument unsolved: when the round ends. The built-in timer settles it.

• Thirty, sixty or ninety seconds, chosen with one press.
• The clock turns red for the last ten seconds and ticks audibly for the last five, so the actor knows without looking.
• Pause mid-round if someone needs to stop, and carry on from where you were.
• Sixty seconds is the right default. Thirty rewards luck over skill; ninety drags once the guessers have run out of ideas.

Score Tracking and Team Mode

Two teams, a point each time the word is guessed, and a visible indicator of whose turn it is. The charades generator keeps the score in your browser, so a refresh in the middle of a game does not wipe it.

1. Press + when a team guesses correctly and − if you awarded one by mistake.
2. Press Swap turn. The highlight moves to the other team and the clock resets, ready for the next actor.
3. Play to a target rather than a time limit. First to ten points gives a better ending than “let us stop now”, which always arrives mid-round.
4. Reset score starts a fresh game without reloading anything.

For more than two teams, run the extra teams on the same scoreboard by noting their points elsewhere, or pick who goes next with the turn order spinner and keep this one purely for the words.

Adding Your Own Charades Words

The sixty shipped words are a starting point. Open Edit the list, paste one word or phrase per line, and press Apply to wheel. The wheel takes up to 100 entries and remembers your list in that browser.

Custom lists are where the charades generator becomes a party game rather than a word list. Inside jokes, colleagues’ catchphrases, family holidays, the name of every pet anyone has owned — a list the room wrote itself beats any generic set of charades words.

Your entries lose the difficulty and category tags, because only the shipped words carry them. The filters then have nothing to filter, which is expected. Restore starting list brings the original sixty back.

Drawing a Word Without Anyone Else Seeing

The wheel ships with Hide words on the wheel switched on, which is the correct default for this game and not for any other tool on the site. The segments show question marks, so the room can watch the wheel spin without reading the answers. The word appears only on the result card, which the actor looks at alone.

Turn it off if you are playing a variant where everyone sees the options first, or if you simply want to read the list on the wheel. Nothing about the draw changes either way.

Family Charades Ideas That Actually Work

A few rules fix most of what goes wrong with family charades, and none of them are about the words.

• Mix the teams by age, not against it. Adults versus children ends badly in both directions. One adult and one child per team keeps every round competitive.
• Agree the signals first. Number of words, number of syllables, “sounds like” — two minutes of agreement saves twenty minutes of arguing.
• Ban talking, not noises. A strict no-sound rule makes it miserable for younger players; banning actual words is enough.
• Let the youngest go first. They watch the adults set an unreachable standard otherwise.
• Stop while it is still fun. Playing to a target score builds that in.

Is the Word Really Random?

Yes. Each draw uses crypto.getRandomValues(), the browser’s cryptographic random number generator, with out-of-range values discarded so no word is favoured. The word is chosen before the wheel starts turning, so spin length and click position change nothing. The randomness methodology page shows the code and gives you a console test.

Switch on Remove entry after it is picked if you want a long game with no word repeating. Each word then leaves the wheel as it is drawn, exactly as the name draw tool does with names.

Three Games on One Page

Charades, Catchphrase and Pictionary are the same evening and usually the same group of people, so they share one page rather than three. The tab bar at the top switches between them and nothing reloads: the timer, the score and your filters stay exactly where they were.

Each game keeps its own words, its own colour and its own scoreboard. Each one is also directly linkable — add #catchphrase or #pictionary to the address and the page opens on that game, which is handy for a bookmark or a message to the group.

Catchphrase: Describe It, Do Not Act It

Catchphrase is the talking version. You describe the phrase without saying any of the words in it, and your team shouts guesses. Forty-five phrases ship with it across three sets.

The one rule that matters: you may not say any word that appears in the phrase, or an obvious variation of it. Without that rule the game is over in four seconds.

Pictionary: Draw It Instead

Sixty drawing prompts across objects, animals, places and actions, in the same three difficulties. You need paper or a whiteboard; everything else works the same way, including the timer and the score.

• Objects — Umbrella, Lighthouse, Typewriter. The fairest category, because nothing has to be mimed.
• Animals — Owl, Octopus, Platypus. Easy to start, brutal at Hard.
• Places — Beach, Pyramid, Underground station. Best for longer rounds.
• Actions — Swimming, Flying a kite, Juggling. Hardest to draw, most fun to watch someone try.

Ninety seconds suits drawing better than sixty. The clock is per game, so set it once on this tab and it stays there when you switch back and forth.

Other Party Tools on This Site

The charades generator sits alongside a few others that come out at the same kinds of gatherings. The random food picker settles what to order afterwards, the turn order spinner decides who starts, and the name hat draws names with no repeats. They share one engine, so the list editor, the results export and the share link behave identically. The controls walkthrough covers every button.