You might do guys versus girls or some other simple way to split up the teams. One team could be all of the people with birthdays that fall during January-June, and the other team could be those with birthdays in July-December. If you have an odd number, it might be good to work out a system where one person on the bigger team sits out each round, or that person has to give clues an extra time. When you have couples or family members playing together, it can be a good idea to put them on separate teams so that they do not have any kind of advantage over the other players.
This is more of a suggestion than a rule, because it makes the game run smoother but is not mandatory. If you want to draw each card from the pile, that is fine, too. You can play the game if you only have the Taboo cards and none of the other equipment. Gameplay can progress in the same way. You could even write up your own cards with a guess-word and Taboo words that you decide yourself.
You could use a timer on someone’s phone so that it will make noise when it goes off. Each round should be 1-2 minutes. You can decide on a longer or shorter time limit to change up the game. The card you are looking at when the timer runs out is not scored for anyone and should be discarded, rather than passed on to the next player.
If you get to a word that you don’t know, or your teammates are having a hard time guessing it, you can skip the card. However, if you do skip a card, that point goes to the other team. If the guess-word is cookbook, then you can’t use “cook” or “book” within any of your clues. Your teammates must guess the exact word, so if they get it close, or get part of the word, you need to keep giving them clues until they get it exactly right.
When you hear the clue giver say one of the taboo words, you buzz them. Put the card into a discard pile for that round. Put skipped cards into the same discard pile.
Make sure that everyone is clear on which pile is which as they set cards down. It is important to keep the piles separated for accurate scoring.
You can decide to play to a certain score, or for a certain number of rounds, whichever you prefer. Make sure not to score the card that the timer ran out on for anyone. It gets put out of the deck until the end of the game. Take all of the cards used during that round and set them aside. Don’t use them again until the entire deck has been used. At that point, if you are still playing, you can shuffle the deck and start using the cards again.
Read the guess-word and all of the taboo words before you begin to give any clues. You want to remember what words you can’t say. If you realize partway into giving your clues that you said something early on that was a bad clue and that actually confused your teammates, you can tell them to disregard that clue.
For example, if the guess-word is poster, you might be able to described it as a wall hanging, or a picture. If the guess-word was angry, you could say, “It is not happy or pleased. ”
If you have a word like bank, you can get people there by describing the place you deposit money or the edge of a river. If the word is chicken, you could describe it as a farm animal and also what you call someone who is acting afraid. You could describe when two cars are racing toward each other until one of them veers out of the way.
It’s quite common for someone to win 6 points in a 1-minute round, so don’t spend more than about 15 seconds on a given word. It’s likely that the point you’ll earn won’t be worth it You still want to do this with discretion because if you pass on too many, then you’ll just end up with less points than your opponent. Only pass when it is absolutely necessary to help your team come out on top.
