Taboo Variants and House Rules

Taboo was designed by Brian Hersch and first published in 1989. In a 2017 interview with the Chicago Toy and Game Group, he recalled that early on he had a market research report done on party games and Trivial Pursuit.

Hasbro publishes the classic game today. Its current rules sheet, dated 2023, lists 212 cards with 848 guess words, a squeaker and a sand timer, for 4 or more players aged 13 and up. It also notes that Taboo is a trademark of Hersch and Company.

Those rules ban any part of a word on the card, sneaky plurals and abbreviations, and "sounds like", "rhymes with" or "starts with" clues. They also ban gestures, noises and sound effects, though the sheet adds that singing is allowed. A team scores 1 point per card guessed, and the other team gets 1 point for each card squeaked or skipped.

Official versions have played with the rules too. An older Hasbro edition came with a game-changer die, and when it lands on One Guesser, only one teammate can guess on your turn. The family edition, Taboo Kids vs Parents, is for ages 8 and up and prints only 2 forbidden words on each card for kids.

Taboo Party is an independent online game built on the same idea, and it is not made by Hasbro. It swaps the single card for a board of ten words, and one point per card for points by difficulty.

Every variant is one of two kinds. Some are settings that Taboo Party enforces for you: the timer, the rounds and teams, the word pack and the checks on taboo words. Others are house rules that only your group can enforce, because the game cannot see hands or count the words in a clue.

Your group still has tools for house rules. With Taboo reporting on, the other team taps a word tile to report a slip, and the word is confirmed once a majority of the watching players report it. With Taboo voting on as well, reported words go to a 30-second vote after the turn, and 60% of the votes cast confirms them.

A confirmed word loses the points it scored that turn. A reported word that nobody guessed simply drops off the board, so a report only costs points on a word the team actually got.

No hand gestures is the official rule, so most groups already play it. Around a table everyone can see the describer's hands. On a video call, hands only matter when cameras are on, so agree that the describer keeps their hands out of shot or turns the camera off.

Taboo Party cannot see hands, and the Describer voice check only listens for board words said aloud. Enforce the rule with Taboo reporting: when the describer mimes a word, the watching team reports that word's tile. Add Taboo voting if your group argues about what counts as a gesture.

In the one-word variant, every clue is a single word, and the describer waits for a guess before giving the next one. It rewards a big vocabulary and careful choices, because a vague word wastes a whole clue.

The game does not count words, so this is a house rule. One-word clues are slower, so pick 90-second turns, and turn on Taboo reporting so the other team can flag a describer who slips into a sentence.

Board points still apply. Easy words are fast on one word, while a hard word may need four or five tries, so describers should clear the easy tiles first.

Allowing sound effects relaxes the official rule. It suits children and new players, because a describer who is stuck on Elephant can always trumpet. Agree whether animal noises only are allowed, or any sound at all.

The Describer voice check does not mind sounds. It listens for English only and flags a board word it hears, so a squawk passes while the word itself is still caught. The check is not offered in the Discord Activity, so a Discord game relies on reporting.

An acting round goes the other way: the describer may not speak at all and acts each word out, as in charades. Guessers need to see the describer, so play in one room or with cameras on, and use 90-second turns because acting is slow.

The game keeps an acting round honest in one way. A describer cannot type in chat during their own turn, so nobody can spell the answer out. Guessers type their guesses into the guess box as usual.

Timed variants are settings, so Taboo Party enforces them exactly. Turn time can be 30, 60 or 90 seconds, and a game lasts 3, 6, 9 or 12 rounds.

Blitz uses 30-second turns. 6 rounds with 2 teams is 12 turns, which is only 6 minutes on the clock, so it suits a quick game before dinner. Short turns favor easy words, because a hard word can eat the whole turn.

Marathon uses 90-second turns and 12 rounds, the most the lobby allows. Long turns leave time for hard words and for the bonus words that arrive after six correct guesses, which makes them the better test of a describer.

The clock starts only when the describer presses Start turn, and guesses that arrive in a short grace period after the timer still count. The default 60-second turn sits between Blitz and Marathon.

Strict mode turns on every check the game has: Taboo reporting, Taboo voting and the Describer voice check. The voice check listens through the describer's browser and flags any board word said aloud, so the other team does not have to catch every slip.

Hard mode changes the words instead. Taboo - Intense deals only hard and insane words, from 3,334 words. Taboo - Insane deals only insane words worth 52 to 80 points, from 1,043 words.

The strictest game of all is ranked play, where reporting and voting cannot be switched off and Blitz is a leaderboard category. Read the guide to ranked Taboo rules, leaderboards and strategy before you try it.

A themed night puts your own words on the board: films for a movie night, inside jokes for old friends or a unit's key terms for a class. On Taboo Party this is a custom word pack, which the game enforces because only its words are dealt.

A pack needs at least 100 words, with at least 10 in each tier you use, and its owner must be in the room when the host picks it. Sort the words into tiers by how fast your group would guess them, so the points stay fair.

Planning a theme, writing fair words and the pack format are covered in the guide to making a custom Taboo word pack.

For a bilingual twist, the Hinglish pack mixes English and Hindi words on one board, and the guide to playing Taboo in Hindi and Hinglish covers the spelling rules to agree first.

• Co-op high score: choose one team, which needs only 2 players, and play together for your best total. It suits three people who do not want to split up.
• Three-team chaos: one team needs at least 2 players, two teams need 4 and three teams need at least 6 players. Each round then has three turns, so everyone gets more time at the front.
• Captains' draft: press Draft, and captains pick their teams one player at a time after a coin flip decides who picks first.
• One guesser: borrowed from the game-changer die. The team agrees that only one player types guesses, while the others may only listen. The game does not enforce it.
• No hints: hints cost coins and only a signed-in guesser on the playing team can buy one, so a group can simply agree not to buy any.
• Best of three: press Play again after each game to return to the same room. The team cards keep each team's wins, ties and losses there, so the score of the match is always in view.

Pick one variant at a time and say it out loud before the first turn. Mixing three new rules in one game mostly leads to arguments.

• Young children and beginners: sound effects allowed, 90-second turns and the Easy pack.
• Friends on a video call: no hand gestures, with Taboo reporting on.
• Experienced players: Blitz with strict mode, or Marathon with the Intense pack.
• A large party: three teams, with captains picking them in a draft.
• A class or a club: a themed custom pack built from the words you are studying.

For the full classic rules and the house rules worth settling first, read the complete guide to the rules of Taboo.

Playing with younger children? The guide to Taboo with kids and mixed ages covers gentler rules and what the game does for players under 13.