Dumb charades needs nothing but people and movie names. The hard part is usually the second one: someone has to keep thinking of titles, keep time, and remember the score. Our Dumb Charades game does those three jobs on one phone, and the rules below work with or without it.
The rules
- Make two teams, two or more players each.
- One actor per turn. They see a movie name that their own team doesn't.
- No speaking. No mouthing words, no drawing letters in the air, no pointing at a poster with the title on it.
- Their team guesses out loud before time runs out. The other team watches.
- Teams take turns. One point for each movie guessed.
How the phone version works
Pick the languages, the difficulty (Easy, Mixed or Hard), the clock (60, 90 or 120 seconds) and how many turns each team gets (3, 5 or 8).
On each turn, the phone says whose turn it is. The actor taps "I'm acting, show me the movie" and sees the title, its language and how many words it has.
What the actor sees. If they don't know the movie, they can swap it once.
They tap "Hide it and start the clock", put the phone down where everyone can see the time, and act. When someone gets it, tap Guessed it!
The team's colour, the countdown, and one big button. The last 10 seconds tick.
The movie is shown after every turn, guessed or not.
Ties: if both teams guess the same number of movies, the team that took less time in total wins. A turn that isn't guessed counts as the full clock.
The usual signs
Signs differ from group to group, so agree them before you start. These are the common ones:
| Sign | How |
|---|---|
| It's a movie | Wind an old film camera: one hand at your eye, the other turning a handle |
| Number of words | Hold up that many fingers |
| Which word you're acting | Hold up fingers again: two means the second word |
| Syllables | Lay fingers on your forearm |
| Sounds like | Tug your ear, then act a word that rhymes |
| Small word (a, the, of, ka, ki) | Finger and thumb close together |
| The whole title | Sweep both arms in a big circle |
| Longer / shorter | Pull your hands apart, or push them together |
| Yes, that's it! | Point at your nose, then at whoever said it |
For Hindi and English movies, many groups use folded hands (namaste) and tipping an imaginary hat. Again, agree it first.
361 movie names
The game has 361 movies, sorted by language and how hard they are to act:
- Hindi: 163 (50 easy, 81 medium, 32 hard)
- English: 127 (48 easy, 66 medium, 13 hard)
- Tamil: 30 · Telugu: 21 · Malayalam: 13 · Kannada: 7
Easy means everyone's seen them and the titles are short: Sholay, 3 Idiots, Titanic, Frozen. Hard means old classics and long titles: Kaagaz Ke Phool, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
The full list, sorted by language and difficulty.
See the full list of dumb charades movie names. It works fine on its own if you'd rather pick movies yourselves.
Tips for the actor
- Start with the big signs: movie, language, number of words. Your team should shout them back so you know they got them.
- Act the easiest word first, not the first word.
- "Sounds like" saves you on names. Sholay: tug your ear, act "show", then "lay" down.
- Stuck on one word? Move on and come back to it.