How to Play Dumb Charades

What is Dumb Charades?

Dumb Charades is an entertaining game that brings a lot of joy and excitement to any party or gathering. It is suitable for people of all ages, including children, and guarantees a fantastic time for everyone involved. Additionally, this game serves as a fantastic icebreaker in various settings such as team outings, family get-togethers, and school excursions. Its ability to engage and entertain individuals from different age groups makes it a versatile and enjoyable activity for any occasion.

You might also like to read about another popular game – How to play Tambola.

In this activity, participants engage in the art of conveying the meaning behind phrases or the titles of movies, personalities, books, TV shows, and more through the use of acting. Verbal communication is not permitted, and instead, individuals are challenged to express the phrase or title solely through physical gestures, facial expressions, and body language.

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How to Play Dumb Charades?

• Choose a theme like names of Bollywood/Hollywood movies, songs of movies. You may choose to have multiple rounds with a different theme in every round.
• Decide the time which will be allocated to teams to enact & find out the assigned movie/song. Generally, 60 seconds is good enough.
• Form 2 or more teams, each with at least 2 members.
• Team A decides the word or phrase (depending upon the decided theme e.g. movies, personalities) and calls one member from another team, say Team B, and tell him/her secretly the word or the phrase.
• The identified member from Team B has to enact the film name or the song via his body language without any lip movement to the remaining members of his team.
• Others in his team have to guess the name of the movie or song by following the gestures.
• Pre-define gestures for the most common of words, like – male/female, old/new, English/Hindi/other, etc.
• It is advisable to have an empire that can ensure that all the rules of the game are being followed and can keep a track of time and score.
• The scoring can be done in multiple ways:
  • You can award 10 points to the team for each successful guess of theirs within the timeframe (generally, 1 min.) In case a team fails to guess, do not award any points or deduct 5 or 10 points from their score. The team with maximum positive points, in the end, Wins!
  • You can do a bidding process
    • Bidding starts from 60 seconds.
    • Every team bids and the lowest bidder gets the chance to perform.
    • If a team bids 20 seconds and does it successfully within 20 seconds, they get 100 points. If they are not able to do it in 20 seconds, they get negative marks e.g. -50

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Dumb Charades Gestures

You may call them Dumb Charades Protocol, Actions, or acceptable hints. The person enacting the name/song of the movie is not supposed to speak anything. However, he can use the following pre-defined gestures to help his team members in guessing the given name/song:

• ‘Thumb Up’ can be used to represent an English/Hollywood movie whereas ‘Thumb Down’ can be used to represent a Hindi / Bollywood movie. A ‘horizontal thumb’ can be used for other languages.
• To show the number of words in the name of the movie, take out and show the same number of fingers. For eg., to show “3 Idiots” show 3 fingers.
• To indicate a Latest/new movie, point a finger down in front multiple times. To show an old movie, point your thumb, or wave your hand backwards over your shoulder. To show an intermediate one, shake your palm a little horizontally.
• Break the Name of the movie into 2 halves to explain the halves separately. To break it, place your right palm vertically over left as if to cut. Then, using fingers show which part you are going to explain now – 1 finger for the first half of the movie name, 2 fingers for the 2nd half.
• While enacting a movie name, if you feel it is easy to guess by the actor name or the actress’s name, you could enact them as well. Point to moustache to show you are explaining a hero’s name in case you know who was the male lead actor in the film and point a crooked finger to your nose to show that you are explaining the heroin.
• The gesture for rhyming words (similar-sounding words) is to touch your ear.
• Articles and prepositions like ‘the’, ‘to’, ‘or’ etc. that cannot be acted out can be shown with the gesture made by touching the tip of your thumb with your forefinger. This gesture means insignificant.
• Whenever a team member is guessing right, point at him and nod affirmatively.

It adds a whole lot of entertainment to all kinds of celebrations.

Some Movie Names to Enact

Hindi Movie Names

Zindagi na Milegi Dobara, Dev D, Talash, Mera Piya Ghar aaya, Baghban, Yalgaar, Sailaab, Namak halaal, Andha Kanoon, Omkara, Rockford, Zubeida, Shaadi le ladoo, Anurodh, Dahek, Reshma or Shera, Virasat, Maqbool, Gangs of Wasseypur, Nischay, Chitchor, Jalwa, Duplicate, Chain khulli ki main khulli, Kabul express, Saas bahu aur sensex, Shaka Laka boom boom, My name is Anthony Gonsalves, Manorama six feet under, Rok Sako to rok lo, Ugly Aur Pagli, Victoria no 203, Parineeta, Paheli, Dashavatar, Gumnaam, Gumraah, Jimmy, 36 China Town

50+Bizzare Bollywood Movie Names for Dumb Charades Champions

English Movie Names

2 Fast 2 Furious, Anastasia, The Peacemaker, The Dark Knight Rises, Inception, Blood Diamond, Forrest Gump, A Few Good Men, Beverly Hills Cop, The Good the bad the ugly, Blackbeard’s Ghost, Legally Blonde, Maverick, The Terminal, Meet the Fockers, Bird on a Wire, Robocop, The Bourne Supremacy, A Shot in the Dark, An American in Paris, Anywhere but Here, The Apple Dumpling Gang, Babel, The Bishop’s Wife, Blank Check, Braveheart, Cardio Boot Camp, Charade, Last Holiday, Leon the Professional, Life, The Little Mermaid, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Madagascar, Man on Fire, Mean Girls, Meet the Fockers, The Hangover, Dirty Dancing, Sex and the City

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Here’s one pictureka version to keep your kids engaged in a super fun and exciting way –

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