Hobbies And Interests
Act Out a Book or Event
An effective charades player must learn how to indicate common items such as a book or an event in a short amount of time. To indicate that the word or phrase is a book, put your hands together with the palms touching in a praying gesture and slowly spread them open to mimic the opening of a book. To provide a clue that your word is related to an event, gesture to your wrist to indicate a watch (and time), and point backward or forward to convey that the event has occurred or is in the future.
Act Out a Movie or TV Show
Many charades words are related to pop culture, which means a heavy dose of film and television references. You can act out a movie by squinting one eye and pretending you're peering through a lens, while you make a cranking gesture. For TV shows, you can simply draw an imaginary square or rectangle in the air, or you can raise your right hand and pretend you are clicking on a remote control.
Act Out Word Length and Similar Words
Another thing to do in charades is to indicate the length of the word, which can help reduce the number of incorrect guesses. Act out word length by holding your hands apart a little bit or a lot to demonstrate the number of letters in the word. You can also indicate word length by holding up your fingers to match the number of words, though if you don't do this in the beginning, you might confuse your teammates. With a very difficult word, you can indicate to your team that you will give them a word that rhymes with the word they can't guess. Act this out by placing a hand behind your ear as if you can't hear, which is a cue for "sounds like."
Act Out Close Guesses
The frustrating part about charades is that as your teammates get closer to guessing the word or phrase, your first instinct is to open your mouth and let rip a huge "Yes." But that would be cheating, so the next best thing to do when your teammates are getting close to guessing the word or phrase is to nod vigorously or make a "keep going" gesture with raised hands as if you're guiding a driver into a parking spot. Conversely, as the guesses become less accurate, shake your head to indicate to your teammates that they're moving further away from the correct answer.