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How to play Celebrity

Get your team to guess the most celebrity names across three rounds

Also called The Hat Game, Fishbowl, Salad Bowl

In 90 seconds

  1. Split into two teams. One phone runs the game — it gets passed to whoever's giving clues, since that's the only screen the names show on. Keep it out of everyone else's sightline.
  2. Everyone joins from their own phone, taps in a few celebrity names, then puts the phone down. Real, fictional, alive, dead, your neighbor's cat — anything the room will recognize. They all go into one bowl.
  3. Round one: say anything except the name. One person picks up the phone and gives clues; their team shouts guesses. Every name they get is a point, and the next name comes straight up. Sixty seconds each.
  4. Teams alternate clue-givers until the bowl is empty. Then every name goes back in and you play the same bowl again — round two: one word only.
  5. Round three: act it out, no talking. Same names, third time around.
  6. Most points across the three rounds wins. It takes about half an hour.

The trick — and the reason people who've played it once want to play it again — is that the bowl never changes. By round three you're miming a name your team has already heard twice, and one raised eyebrow is enough.

What you need

Split into teams. Each player submits celebrity names, real or fictional, using this or their own device.

Each round

Teams take turns. One clue-giver draws names and gives clues under the current round's rule until time runs out. The same names come back each round.

A worked round

Ana, Bo and Cass are the Reds. Dev, Elle and Finn are the Blues. Between them they've written twelve names into the bowl.

Round one, say anything. Ana takes the phone and Bo and Cass face her.

Ana: "Okay — she's a scientist, she won two Nobel prizes—"

Bo: "Marie Curie!"

Ana taps the screen and the next name is up. That's one point to the Reds, and the app has already moved on — nobody writes anything down.

Ana: "He's got the hat, the whip, he's scared of snakes—"

Cass: "Indiana Jones!"

Two. The next name is one Ana can't get anywhere near, so she passes — it goes back in for someone else to try, and she'll only face it again herself if she clears the rest of the bowl first. She gets three passes a turn.

The timer runs out mid-sentence. Ana's turn is over with four names, and the phone goes to Dev for the Blues, who picks up from the same bowl. Teams keep alternating until the last name is gone.

Then the app tips all twelve names back in, shuffles, and starts round two. Same names. This time Ana gets one word.

Ana: "Radium."

Bo: "Marie Curie!"

That's the game. By round three she just has to mime holding something dangerous and Bo is already shouting.

Rulings

Can I say "it rhymes with…" or use the first letter?

No. Round one is say anything except the name — anything about the person is fair, but spelling it, rhyming it, or giving initials is giving the name. Round two's one word is one word, not one word plus a gesture.

What if I say part of the name by accident?

Whoever's turn it is takes the honest way out: pass on that name and move on. Nobody tracks it, and the app has no penalty for it — this is a party game and the room already knows what happened.

Does the same person give clues every time?

Take it in turns within your team. It's the best seat in the game, and everyone should get it at least once per round.

We ran out of names in the middle of someone's turn

The round ends there and the bowl refills. The clue-giver whose turn it was picks up where they left off in the new round, with the time they had left — so a big turn isn't punished for emptying the bowl.

Can we play with three teams? Or just one?

Set up as many teams as you like — three or four is good at a bigger party. One team works too, everyone clearing the bowl together against the clock. All you actually need is someone holding the phone and someone who isn't.

Someone wrote a name nobody has heard of

Let it go into the bowl anyway. A name that only one person knows is a gift for the round-three mime, and if it's genuinely unguessable, whoever's stuck passes on it.

Do we have to use our phones to write names?

No. The host screen shows a join code, and phones are the easy way — but a group with no phones can hand one device around, or pick a ready-made deck at setup and let the app deal the names.

Ways to Play

Themed bowl is the one to try first. Agree a secret theme before you write — everyone in a hat, everyone from the same decade — and give a bonus to whichever team guesses it. It quietly makes the writing part of the game rather than admin.

Swap the final round is for groups who've played this a lot. Replace the mime with sound-only (noises, no words) or with drawing, and the whole familiar bowl feels new again.

Themes

Actors, Historical figures, Fictional characters, Musicians

Start Playing

No sign-up is required to play.