133 Charades Ideas: Easy, Medium and Hard Words to Act Out

The best charades words are ones you can show with your whole body: actions, animals, jobs and sports. Here are 133 hand-picked ideas in three levels (44 easy, 54 medium and 35 hard), plus the classic signals and a few house rules. The charades generator picks them at random, with a timer and a hidden-word mode.

Easy charades (44)

One clear action or animal. Great for kids.

baby, bird, brush, cat, catch, chicken, clap, cook, cry, dance, dog, drink, drive, eat, elephant, fish, fly, frog, hop, horse, hug, jump, kangaroo, kick, laugh, monkey, phone, pizza, rabbit, read, run, sing, sleep, smile, snake, sneeze, swim, throw, tired, walk, wave, wink, write, yawn.

Medium charades (54)

Jobs, sports and characters that take a few gestures.

archery, astronaut, balloon, basketball, bodybuilder, bowling, boxing, camera, chef, climb, conductor, cowboy, crab, dentist, doctor, drummer, fishing, football, gardener, golf, gorilla, guitar, hiccup, juggle, karate, knit, lifeguard, magician, mime, mirror, model, mop, paint, penguin, photographer, pilot, pirate, plumber, robot, sailor, skateboard, skiing, snowman, soccer, superhero, surfing, sweep, teacher, tennis, tightrope, vacuum, waiter, wizard, zombie.

Hard charades (35)

These need a small scene or some creativity.

acrobat, auction, avalanche, ballet, barber, blindfold, bungee, caterpillar, cheerleader, earthquake, escalator, firefighter, hypnotist, jellyfish, lumberjack, marathon, mummy, orchestra, parachute, puppeteer, quicksand, referee, rodeo, sculptor, shipwreck, sleepwalk, statue, stuntman, sumo, trampoline, tsunami, ventriloquist, volcano, weightlifter, yoga.

The classic signals

• Number of words: hold up that many fingers.
• Which word: hold up fingers again for the word you are acting.
• Number of syllables: lay fingers on your forearm.
• Sounds like: tug your ear, then act a rhyming word.
• Close, keep going: wave the guessers on with both hands.

House rules vary, so agree on them before the first round.

From written riddles to acted scenes

Charades started in 18th-century France as a written riddle: each syllable of a word was described in cryptic verse, then the whole word. They appeared in magazines and even on Regency-era fans, and Jane Austen wrote one. In the early 1800s the French turned them into acted performances, and the custom spread to Britain. Thackeray’s novel Vanity Fair describes an elaborate game of acted charades. The mime-only version most people play today came later.

Sources

• Word lists: hand-picked by the RandomWordMaker team.
• Charades, Wikipedia.