A round
The clue is on one screen
Whoever is acting gets ten seconds to read a clue nobody else can see, and then ninety seconds to get it across without speaking. Around a table you draw a slip in front of everybody and somebody always sees it; here the words reach exactly one person and there is nowhere for them to leak.
The person acting has two buttons and no more, because their hands are the medium. One starts the clock early. The other gives a clue up, and giving one up costs a point, so a skip is a decision rather than a reflex.
Everybody guesses at once, in writing
The guesses are typed rather than shouted. On a call, four people shouting is one person shouting and three being cut off, because conferencing audio only carries one voice at a time. Typed, everybody guesses at once and nobody is talked over — and since the person acting is silent by the rules, nothing is lost from the half of the game that is spoken.
Every guess lands on the actor's screen the moment it is sent, right or wrong. Being told kettle, kettle, teapot tells you exactly which way to push, which is a thing no hat full of paper slips has ever done for anybody.
The moment somebody types it, the clue is done and the next one deals on the same clock. There is no pause to work out who said it first, because the software already knows.
Both halves of a charade are paid
A clue that lands is two people getting something right: somebody made it gettable and somebody recognised it. So it pays a point to whoever typed it and a point to whoever was acting.
Paying only the guesser would make acting an unpaid service you perform between turns, and a table works that out quickly. Over a whole lap the two halves are worth exactly the same, which is what keeps everybody trying at both.
At the end of every turn each clue from it goes face up, including the one nobody got. That is usually the best thirty seconds of the game.
On the sheet
Questions people ask
Can I just shout the answer instead of typing it?
Shout as well, by all means. The point only lands when somebody types it, and that is not pedantry: on a call the first person to shout blocks everybody else, so the typed box is what lets five people guess at the same time rather than in a queue.
What if it decides my right answer is wrong?
It will, occasionally. The matcher ignores case, punctuation and the little words English puts in front of a noun, and each clue carries the phrasings worth taking — but it will not guess at synonyms, because a machine that awards the wrong word is worse in a room of colleagues than one that occasionally refuses the right one. The person acting can see your near miss and push you the last inch, and if it is hopeless they give it up for a point.
Are there film titles?
None, and no names, brands or places either. A title is the classic charades category and it is the least fair thing you can put in front of a room where somebody is playing in their second language. Everything in the deck is something a person can do with their body, or a thing with a shape.
Can I play it on my own?
No, and this is the one game here with no machine to play against. A stand-in can neither mime on a camera nor watch one, and the only thing it could honestly do in either chair would be to play a different game with the miming taken out.
Does anybody have to install anything to play Charades?
No. It runs in the browser everyone already has open. One person opens a room, reads out the six-character code or pastes the link into the channel, and everyone else is at the table in a couple of seconds.
Do we need accounts?
No. There is no sign-up, no password and no email address anywhere in the flow. You pick a name when you sit down, and that is the whole of it.
How many people can play Charades?
3 to 8 — best with five. A room seats up to 12.
How long does a game of Charades take?
About 15 minutes, which is the length of a coffee break rather than the length of a games night. Nobody is the host in the sense of holding the controls, so a round finishes whether or not everyone is still looking at it.
Does it work over a video call?
That is what it is for. The game is on the screen and the talking is on the call — nobody has to describe a board to anybody, and the parts that must stay private stay on the server rather than being read out.