Ranked Taboo: Rules, Leaderboards and Strategy

Ranked play needs a signed-in account and 5 casual games finished with 2 or 3 teams. Until then the Ranked choice on the create-room form shows a lock. Tapping it explains why: "Ranked needs an account" for a guest, or how many casual games are still to go.

The same check applies to every player, not just the host. A guest who tries to join a ranked room is asked to sign in, and an account without enough casual games is turned away. Nobody can join a ranked game once it has started.

One-team games do not help you unlock it, because the check only counts casual games with more than one team. Play a few ordinary two-team games with friends first, and ranked opens by itself.

A ranked game uses the same board, scoring and bonus words as a casual one. What changes is how much the host can adjust, before and during the game.

• Games last 6 or 12 rounds, with turns of 30 or 60 seconds. A new ranked room starts at 12 rounds of 60 seconds.
• The word pack must be Standard, Hindi or Hinglish. Custom packs, shop packs and every other built-in pack are not allowed.
• There are always 2 or 3 teams. The one-team co-op mode is casual only.
• Taboo reporting and Taboo voting are always on, and nobody can switch them off. The Describer voice check stays off, and Guesser voice stays on.
• Teams are picked with Draft. The Randomize button is hidden, and players cannot switch teams.
• There is no Skip my turn, and no Make describer: the describer role simply passes to the next teammate after every turn.
• The host cannot end the game early, kick players once it has started, or add and remove teams mid-game.

The lobby sums it up in one line: results count for the leaderboards, team switching is off, and leaving without rejoining forfeits your stats. A dropped connection keeps your seat for 3 minutes, so rejoin quickly if your browser closes.

A ranked game is saved only if it reaches its final round. A game that ends before the last round counts for nobody, whatever the score was.

Ranked results go to boards split by league and category. The leagues are Standard, Hindi and Hinglish, one for each pack ranked allows. The categories are Pro, 12 rounds of 60 seconds, and Blitz, 6 rounds of 30 seconds.

Each board shows the top 50 players by Rank Score, built from the points they scored in ranked games of that league and category. It is not an Elo-style rating that weighs who you beat, so steady scoring across many complete games is what climbs. The board also shows each player's games and wins.

Rank Score also sets a tier badge. Every tier below Legend is split into III, II and I, from the bottom of its range to the top.

Casual games have boards of their own, ranked by Skill Score. The game describes it as "your average total points per match adjusted for number of matches played to ensure fairness". Your average is blended with the average of everyone on the board, and after 20 casual games your own average counts for half.

The casual boards show the top 100 and add a Community and Shop league for custom and shop packs. Players who turn on anonymous mode keep their place on every board, which shows them as Anonymous.

Read the numbers on the board before the words. Ranked packs never deal insane words, so every word is easy, medium or hard, and the board shows each word's exact points.

A hard word in the middle of its range, 38 points, is worth as much as two medium words or almost five easy ones. That does not make hard words the right first move, because they take more clues and more of the clock.

In Blitz, 30 seconds leaves little room for a word that will not land. Clear easy and medium words first, and start a hard word only when it has an obvious way in. In Pro, a 60-second turn leaves time for one or two hard words once the quick ones are gone.

Bonus words change the order too. The sixth exact guess in a turn adds 3 bonus words, and every fourth exact guess after that adds 5 more, at 10, 14, 18 and so on. Early batches are mostly easy words and later ones lean harder, so a fast run of easy words can be worth more than one slow hard word.

Clue order, pacing and real board examples for the describer seat are in our guide to describing words in Taboo.

A guess at least 85% similar to a board word earns half points, so one wrong letter only counts on words of seven letters or more. The team gets the half points once per word, and an exact guess later swaps them for full points.

In a ranked game, fix the spelling at once. A half-point guess does not count toward the six exact guesses that bring bonus words, so leaving a word on half points stalls the run.

How guesses are matched, with real spellings that do and do not qualify, is covered in our guide to guessing faster in Taboo.

Hints are on sale in ranked games, though not in tournament games. They cost coins from the buyer's wallet, never team points, and only a signed-in guesser on the playing team can buy one. A hint shows only on the buyer's screen.

Coins are scarce next to hint prices. A finished game pays 1 coin, or 2 for a win, so a length hint on a hard word costs as much as seven or eight wins. Plus members get 100 free hints a month, which changes that math completely.

Buy where coins turn straight into points. The first letter of a hard word, 8 coins, is the best value when the team has the meaning but not the exact word. Skip hints on easy words, which usually fall to one more clue.

Agree before the game who buys hints. Since a hint appears only for the buyer, two teammates buying the same one pays twice for one answer.

Expect every slip to be reported, because ranked games always have reporting and voting on. A word is confirmed once a majority of the watching players report it. Reported words then go to a 30-second vote after the turn, and 60% of the votes cast confirms them.

A confirmed slip removes the points that word scored, while a reported word nobody guessed costs nothing. So after a clear slip, leave that word and move on. Guessing it now only wins points the vote will take back.

• Every word on your board counts as taboo, including words you have not reached yet. Do not use one board word to describe another.
• Avoid parts of the word. Saying "sun" for Sunflower is the kind of clue a watching team reports and a vote confirms.
• The voice check is off in ranked games, so the other team's ears are the only judge. Speak clearly, so a near-sound is not mistaken for the word.
• Keep talking to the end. Guesses in the short grace period after the timer still count.

Ranked teams are built in a Draft, and after that nobody can change who describes next. Plan for everyone to describe, and give each player a job for the turns when they are not describing.

• The describer reads the points first, clears the quick words, and calls out when a bonus batch arrives.
• The fast typist enters short, likely answers quickly, since wrong guesses cost nothing.
• The spellers fix near misses at once, so the half points become full points and count toward the bonus.
• The hint buyer is the one player who buys hints and reads the pattern out.
• On the other team's turn, everyone watches the words. A report needs a majority of the watching players, so agree to report a clear slip together.

For the house rules and variants that casual games allow, see the guide to Taboo variants and house rules.