Charades - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Charades or charade is a word

Word game

Word games and puzzles are spoken or board games often designed to test ability with language or to explore its properties.Word games are generally engaged as a source of entertainment, but have been found to serve an educational purpose as well...

guessing game

Guessing game

A guessing game is a game in which the object is to guess some kind of information, such as a word, a phrase, a title, or the location of an object.Many of the games are played co-operatively...

. In the form most played today, it is an acting game in which one player acts out a word

Word

In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...

or phrase

Phrase

In everyday speech, a phrase may refer to any group of words. In linguistics, a phrase is a group of words which form a constituent and so function as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. A phrase is lower on the grammatical hierarchy than a clause....

, often by pantomiming

Pantomime

Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...

similar-sounding words, and the other players guess the word or phrase. The idea is to use physical rather than verbal language to convey the meaning to another party. It is also sometimes called Activity, after the board game.

Brief background

Though less commonly it was originally also used to indicate a riddle either in verse or prose, of which the listener must guess the meaning, often given syllable

Syllable

A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...

by syllable—see riddle

Riddle

A riddle is a statement or question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: enigmas, which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that require ingenuity and careful thinking for their solution, and...

. In France the word 'charade' still refers to this kind of linguistic riddle.

Charades has been made into a television show in the form of the Canadian Acting Crazy
Acting Crazy
Acting Crazy is a Canadian television game show. Hosted by Wayne Cox , announced by Terry Reid and produced by Blair Murdoch, the show was shot at the CKVU-TV studios in Vancouver and originally aired on the Global Television Network in 1991...

and Party Game
Party Game (game show)
Party Game was a Canadian television game show in the 1970s, produced by Hamilton independent station CHCH-TV from 1970 to 1981. It aired throughout Canada in syndication, broadcast on 32 stations at its peak....

, the British Give Us a Clue
Give Us A Clue
Give Us a Clue is a British televised game show version of charades which was broadcast on ITV from 1979 to 1992. The original host was Michael Aspel from 1979 to 1983, followed by Michael Parkinson from 1984 to 1992. The show featured two teams, one captained by Lionel Blair and the other by Una...

, the American Body Language
Body Language (game show)
Body Language is an American game show produced by Mark Goodson Productions. The show aired on CBS from June 4, 1984 until January 3, 1986, and was hosted by Tom Kennedy...

, and much more recently the 2005 American series Celebrity Charades
Celebrity Charades
Celebrity Charades is a series which originally aired from January to September, 1979 as a syndicated series throughout the United States.-Original version:...

. Give Us a Clue has also been parodied in Sound Charades
Sound Charades
Sound Charades is a variant of charades played on BBC Radio 4's "antidote to panel games", I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. As with some other ISIHAC games, such as Celebrity What's My Line?, the game has been created by taking an existing one and removing the central concept...

, played on the BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

panel game show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue
I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue
I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, sometimes abbreviated to ISIHAC or Clue, is a BBC radio comedy panel game broadcast since 11 April 1972 at the rate of one or two series each year , transmitted on BBC Radio 4, with occasional repeats on BBC Radio 4 Extra and the BBC's World Service...

. The ISIHAC version, permits players to speak and so describe a scene (often a pun of the title word), which the opposing team has to guess.

Rules of the acted charade

The rules used for the acted charades are usually informal and vary widely, but commonly agree in essence with the following basic rules:

The players divide into two team
Team
A team comprises a group of people or animals linked in a common purpose. Teams are especially appropriate for conducting tasks that are high in complexity and have many interdependent subtasks.A group in itself does not necessarily constitute a team...

s.
Each team in turn produces a "secret" word or phrase, to be guessed by the other team, and writes it on a slip of paper. Rules vary as to which phrases are allowed; single words may be restricted to nouns as found in dictionaries, while multi-word phrases usually are required to be commonly used phrases, or common expressions for well-known concepts. Often the secret phrases allowed are confined to titles of books, songs, or movies.
The slip of paper with the secret phrase is revealed to one member of the other team, the "actor", but kept secret from the remainder of the other team, the "guessers".
The actor then has a limited period of time
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....

in which to convey the secret phrase to the guessers by pantomime.
The actor may not make any sounds or lip movements. In some circles, even clapping is prohibited, while in others, the player may make any sound other than speaking or whistling a recognizable tune.
The actor cannot point out at any of the objects present in the scene, if by doing so they are helping their teammates.
Most commonly, the actor is allowed to make any gestures other than blatantly spelling out the word. In more stringent sets of rules, indicating anything about the form of the phrase is prohibited, even the number of words, so that only the meaning may be acted out.
The guessers attempt to guess the word or phrase based on the actor's performance. They can ask questions, to which the actor may give non-verbal responses, such as nodding in affirmation. If any of the guessers says the correct word or phrase within the time limit in the literal form as written on the slip, their team wins that round; if the phrase is not guessed when the time limit expires, the team that produced the secret phrase wins the round.
The teams alternate until each team member has had an opportunity to be the actor.

Since so many rules can vary, clarifying all the rules before the game begins can avoid problems later.

Standard signals

A number of standard signals have come into common usage in charades, though they are not required. To indicate the general category of a word or phrase:

Person

The player stands with hands on hips.

Poem

The player pretends to hold a paper and pretends to read the poem.

Animal

The player pounds his/her fists on his/her chest (like a gorilla

Gorilla

Gorillas are the largest extant species of primates. They are ground-dwelling, predominantly herbivorous apes that inhabit the forests of central Africa. Gorillas are divided into two species and either four or five subspecies...

), cups his/her hands next his/her head and hop up and down several times (like a rabbit

Rabbit

Rabbits are small mammals in the family Leporidae of the order Lagomorpha, found in several parts of the world...

), or moves very slowly so as to imitate a sloth

Sloth

Sloths are the six species of medium-sized mammals belonging to the families Megalonychidae and Bradypodidae , part of the order Pilosa and therefore related to armadillos and anteaters, which sport a similar set of specialized claws.They are arboreal residents of the jungles of Central and South...

Book

A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...

title

The player unfolds his/her hands as if they were a book.

Movie

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

title

The player pretends to crank an old-fashioned movie camera

Movie camera

The movie camera is a type of photographic camera which takes a rapid sequence of photographs on strips of film which was very popular for private use in the last century until its successor, the video camera, replaced it...

Play

Play (theatre)

A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...

title

The player pretends to pull the rope that opens a theater curtain, or places both hands out, palms facing the audience and touching at the thumbs, and draws them apart like a theater curtain.

Song

In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...

title

The player pretends to sing (often on one knee with arms outspread, in the manner of Al Jolson

Al Jolson

Al Jolson was an American singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer"....

TV show

Television program

A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...

The player draws a rectangle to outline the TV screen.

Quote or phrase

The player makes quotation marks in the air with his/her fingers.

Location

The player makes a circle with one hand, then points to it, as if pointing to a dot on a map

Map

A map is a visual representation of an area—a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, regions, and themes....

Event

The player points to his/her wrist as if he/she was wearing a watch. Alternatively, he/she holds his/her hands up beside his/her head and makes "spirit fingers" (waving fingers back and forth frantically) simulating confetti or a crowd in the background.

Computer Game

The player uses both hands out stretched move thumbs like using a game pad.

Website

The player holds his/her hand out, palm down, horizontal to the ground (as if holding a computer mouse). He/she then moves his/her wrist around as if moving the cursor in the computer.

Signals for common words

Some conventions have also evolved about very common words:

"A" is signed by steepling index fingers together. Following it with either the stretching rubber band
Rubber band
A rubber band is a short length of rubber and latex formed in the shape of a loop and is commonly used to hold multiple objects together...

sign or "close, keep guessing!" sign, will often elicit "an" and "and". (sometimes "and" is signed by pointing at ones palm with the index finger
Index finger
The index finger, , is the first finger and the second digit of a human hand. It is located between the first and third digits, between the thumb and the middle finger...

)
"I" is signed by pointing at one's eye, or one's chest.
"The" is signed by making a "T" sign with the index fingers. The "close, keep guessing!" sign will then usually elicit a rigmarole of other very common words starting with "th".
"That" is signed by the same aforementioned "T" with the index fingers and immediately followed by one flattened hand tapping the head for a "hat", thus the combination becoming "that". Following this with the "opposite" sign indicates the word "this."
Pretending to paddle a canoe can be used to sign the word "or."
For "on," make your index finger leap on to the palm of your other hand. Reverse this gesture to indicate "off." The off motion plus a scissor-snipping action makes "of".
Other common small words are signed by holding the index finger and thumb close together, but not touching.

External links

Charades at the Open Directory Project
Open Directory Project
The Open Directory Project , also known as Dmoz , is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links. It is owned by Netscape but it is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors.ODP uses a hierarchical ontology scheme for organizing site listings...
Generate and Print Cards for Games of Charades
Generate Titles for Charades
Pantoparty – Online Charades Game

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Brief background

Rules of the acted charade

Standard signals

Signals for common words

See also

External links