Free Charades word generator. Random easy / medium / hard prompts to act out, with reveal-on-tap and a configurable round timer. Family-friendly word pool.
Built and maintained by Paul Clark, Redmoon Software
Charades works at parties, family gatherings, classrooms, and team-building events. The reveal-on-tap pattern means the screen can sit in the middle of a circle without players accidentally seeing the next word.
A simpler, ad-free alternative to the various Charades apps. No accounts, no in-app purchases. The word pool is curated to be family-friendly.
A random word or phrase is picked from a difficulty-filtered pool. The word stays blurred until the actor taps Reveal.
Reveal also starts the countdown timer. When time's up a buzzer plays and a banner appears.
All prompts are family-friendly. Hard prompts include movies, idioms, and famous people — pre-agree on Charades gestures (book, movie, syllables) with your group.
The word is blurred until someone taps Reveal. That way the screen can sit on a table without spoiling the next word.
60 seconds for general play. 30 seconds for easy prompts, 90+ for hard prompts (movies, idioms).
Yes — all prompts are curated to be appropriate for mixed-age groups.
For movies, books, and idioms, the classic Charades signals (book = mime open book, movie = mime camera crank, etc.) help. Agree on them with your group first.
Input
Difficulty: mixed · 60-second timer.
Output
Word: "Riding a bike" — actor reveals, timer starts.
The actor taps Reveal, sees the word, and starts acting. Guessers shout out attempts until the timer ends or someone gets it.
A good charades prompt is one that is widely known and physically representable. Those are independent qualities, and the common mistake is to increase difficulty by choosing obscure prompts — which does not make the game harder in an interesting way, it makes it impossible and stops the round dead.
The genuinely hard prompts are famous things with no physical hook: an abstract noun, a concept, a title that is a single ordinary word. Those produce the best rounds because everyone knows the answer once it lands.
A 60 to 90 second limit is the usual range, and it matters more than it sounds: too long and a stuck round becomes uncomfortable, too short and nothing gets solved. Ninety seconds suits mixed groups and larger teams.
Smaller teams guess faster, because more people shouting produces less signal rather than more. Teams of three or four generally play better than teams of eight, and splitting a large group into more teams beats making each team bigger.
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