Contact is a fun word game involving guessing, wordplay and trying to catch each other out. You need a minimum of three people to play, but can play with a much larger group.
The word
One person is the host. They think of a word and give the other players — the ‘guessers’ — the first letter. The guessers’ objective is to guess the word. In order to do this they must get the host to reveal some more letters.
Guessing
The guessers must come up with clues to words that they can guess, but that the host can’t figure out.
For example:
Say the word the host has thought of is “apple.” The host says their word starts with the letter “A.”
The guessers try to think of words that also start with the letter “A”. One of the guessers thinks of the word “angry” and asks “Is it how you feel when you’re really cross?”
The host tries to come up with a word that fits the clue, say “annoyed” or “angry.” They say, “No, It’s not annoyed” or “No, It’s not angry,” and the guessers have to think of another clue.
If the game host cannot think of a word, but one of the other guessers can, the other guesser says “Contact” and the two guessers say the word together after counting down from 3. Or if they both say the same word, the creator has to give them the next letter. If they say different words, or if none of the other guessers knows what the clue means, then the guessers have to think of another clue.
The small print
The guessers can only guess words that start the letters that have been revealed. For instance, once the creator gives the letters “ap,” the guessers can only use words like “apron,” “apart,” or “apricot.” After three or four letters it usually becomes obvious what the word is, and players can start guessing the word.
Success!
The round is over when the guessers guess the word, or admit defeat and ask for the host to reveal it. Now someone else becomes the host and the game starts again.
Take it further
For more group games take a look at Woodcraft folk’s book — Games, Games, Games. This is publication with around 250 group games. The games are all essentially cooperative in nature and develop skills and attitudes which encourage learning together and supporting one another.
If you enjoyed this game then you might like to try Spanish Omelette, another word guessing game. Or you could try out Animal Consequences or make your own set of Inspirational Women Top Trumps.