Charades

The tension in the game of Charades comes from trying to help the audience guess the meaning of the charade, but not to guess too quickly. There is no dramatic tension, and hence no fun, if the charade is solved without a comic detour. For hundreds of years, charades were guessing games with riddle clues, often given in rhyme with a two-part or two-syllable answer. In France the game is still played this way. In the United States and the United Kingdom, Charades are typically performed silently as an acting game for guessing.

Literature on Charades is split between books on guessing games and books on silent theater or tableaux. The former is rooted in the European game tradition of courtly entertainment, most notably the petits jeux of the court of King Louis XIV, the latter, in the people's theater of mumming and mime. Philosophical treatises on the complexities of silent enactment go back to Plato's [Page 122]Cratylus (360 b.c.e.), as Socrates speculated on our potential, like the deaf, for using head, hands, and body for basic communication.

Books still exist from the 1700–1900s about the enormous popularity of American and British Charades. These games were created for group entertainment, either for royalty or for one's own parlor. They typically had poetic clues to proverbs or were riddles, often with the formula “my first,” “my second,” “my whole,” indicating a hint at the first syllable, the second syllable, and the whole proverb or compound phrase. Air-gun, archbishop, court-ship—books often contained alphabetized answers to each riddle. For example: “My first has weight; my second, humor. My whole I only know by rumor: It's tastes, they tell me are aquatic, It's manners, lively and erratic. Answer? Gram-pus” (A whale). The charade sometimes included a tease about its solvability. “My first means provisions, my second yields drink, my whole's a good whish—what is it d'ye think? Fare-well.”

Charades began to include what was called “dumb show” or silent enactment along with the clues in the early 1800s. Nonverbal theater itself goes back to ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, and Asia and was associated with religious ritual, dance, and pageantry. Although charades are done with pantomime, they are different from “pantomimes,” which are scripted comedies often performed for Christmas and other festive occasions. Charades may appear to be like a signed language; however, charades contain conventions, but no grammar.

Today the acting game is played in teams, or with a single, silent performer acting in front of a group. The performer either makes up a clue title, or is given one to perform. The one who guesses correctly gets to go next.

Standard gestures for the game include icons for the initial category: movie—turning of an old-fashioned movie camera; song—opening the mouth and silently singing; book—opening two hands together, imitating a book; and phrase—making quote marks with both first and second fingers moving up and down. Other variations include celebrities, plays, television shows, Web sites, and video games.

Titles that include double-entendre are the most popular in any genre. Clues can be literal or visual puns. Touching the ear can suggest “sounds like.” Pointing to something suggests “looks like.” Pointing to one's lower arm indicates a syllable, harkening back to the split-syllable tradition of the earlier rhyming charades. The enthusiastic touching of the forefinger to the nose indicates the answer is correct, or “on the nose.” Incorrect answers or misunderstood clues often lead to giggling.

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