How to Play Celebrity Chris Coyier

I learned the game “Celebrity” ages ago at a conference afterparty. I always struggle to remember how it works, but I often think about it when the opportunity to play a game with a group of people arises because it’s fun and can be played easily with minimal equipment.

I’m going to write down how it works here so I can always find it.

Split into two teams

Equal players on both sides. The more, the merrier. You might be able to do it with 4 people, but something like 8 or more is far more ideal.

Everybody gets 3 slips of paper.

Make them all as close to the same as possible, so no single slip of paper looks any obviously different.

On the paper, write the name of a celebrity. Living or dead. Real or fiction. Just a name that pretty much anybody would know. For example, Steve Jobs, Captain Crunch, or Melissa McCarthy.

Fold up all the slips of paper the same and put them into a pile.

Ideally, somewhere all the players can easily reach the pile, but you can always move the pile if you need to (maybe use a bowl or something).

One team goes first.

One player from one team is first up. It doesn’t matter. The person to most recently have eaten a bologna sandwich, say.

ROUND ONE: Say anything (except the name).

A 60-second timer (use your phone) starts when the player first picks up one slip of paper. They can say whatever they want except any word on that slip of paper. Say it’s “Steve Jobs”; you can say “famous co-founder of Apple… wore black turtle necks…” but you can’t say “his job was working at Apple.” As soon as someone from their same team (the other team stays silent) shouts out the answer, the player drops the slip of paper into their own temporary pile and grabs a new slip.

That player gets as many slips as possible before the 60-second timer runs out. If they are working on one while the timer goes off, they must put it back into the main pile. Keep the ones they got correct out of the same pile. It’s possible to spend the entire 60 seconds and not even get one.

Probably, the entire main pile will not be gone. Now it’s the other team’s turn, and one player from that team goes (just pick someone). They do the exact same thing, saying stuff and having their teammates guess, getting as many as they can.

The team back-and-forth goes on until the entire main pile of slips is gone.

Each team gets one point for each slip they got.

Now all the slips get re-combined and mixed up into one main pile again.

ROUND TWO: One word.

The same exact procedure happens again. The other team can start first this time, probably the player who is next up in the rotation.

The player grabs a slip of paper for their team to guess, but this time, they can only say a single word. Say it’s Steve Jobs again, they would probably say “Apple”, and someone would guess. This is the fun part; little in-game memes develop, so it pays to be paying attention at all times, even when the other team is playing.

Back and forth until all slips are gone.

ROUND THREE: Charades style only.

Same procedure again, back and forth with the teams.

This time, no words or sounds at all. You have to act it out. Maybe act out taking a bite of that Apple or something.

Ending

Once all three rounds are complete, tally up the points that each team got in each of the three rounds. The team with the most points wins.

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