Time's Up House Rule -- The Fourth Round

Time's Up is definitely my favourite tabletop game. Let me give a brief explanation of how to play.

Start with 40 cards, each featuring a famous name. They can be real or fictional, living or dead, historical figures, actors, cartoons, literary characters, super-villains...whatever. Your job is to get your team to guess the name in an insanely brief 30 seconds (hint: that's why it's called Time's Up). Talk, make sounds, point to things in the room, act it out, whatever. You won't score a lot the first go-round, but unguessed words are returned to the pile, and play continues until all cards are guessed. Sooner or later, somebody has to get it, because sooner or later, everybody's seen the card.

Now comes Round 2, in which you reshuffle and guess the same 40 cards, only this time you can only say one word. Just one, along with any charades or sound effects you want to add. Play goes a lot faster, but it is surprisingly difficult to remember that name you just saw five minutes ago.

When all the cards are guessed again, we move on to Round 3: no words at all. Just charades and sound effects. It's fast, funny, and frustrating. Then add your team's score for all three rounds to determine the winner.

Although Time's Up is a long game, I always regret when it's finally over. So much so that my family has invented the dreaded Fourth Round. It's not found in the instructions, but here's how it goes: once the game is over, we reshuffle and guess the cards yet again. The difference? All players close their eyes, and the clue-giver can only use sound effects. Impossible, you say? Well, pretty close. We drop the teams and just yell out the answers, sometimes not even bothering to award points to the fastest guesser. It's that much fun. Maybe you won't think so, maybe we're just weird, but we're having a blast being so. So try it the next time you play Time's Up.