Charades by the Numbers: How Many Cards a Team Really Guesses
How many cards does a team actually guess in a round of charades? In 1,600 real rounds played in the Act Up app between August and October 2026, the typical team guessed 3 cards in 60 seconds, 6 in 2 minutes and 8 in 3 minutes. The averages are higher, about 7, 9 and 10, because a handful of very fast groups pull them up. Below is the full breakdown by round length and by deck, plus what counts as a good score.
Where the numbers come from
Every time a round finishes in the app, it records how long the round was, which deck was used and how many cards the team got right. No names, no recordings and no personal details are part of this data. For this article we took every completed round from 22 August to 21 October 2026, removed the 12-second rounds produced by our own store demo build, and were left with about 1,600 rounds played by roughly 380 different groups.
Two caveats. First, this is one app’s players, who skew towards families and friends playing in a living room with the phone-on-the-forehead rules. Second, one round reports 272 correct answers, which is someone tapping through cards rather than playing, so we quote medians (the middle value) as the “typical” result and averages separately.
How many cards per round, by length
| Round length | Rounds in sample | Typical (median) correct | Average correct | Average best streak |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 60 seconds | 255 | 3 | 7.0 | 6.0 |
| 120 seconds | 535 | 6 | 9.1 | 6.1 |
| 180 seconds | 800 | 8 | 10.0 | 6.5 |
The pattern is clear: doubling the time from 1 to 2 minutes doubles the typical score, but the third minute only adds about 2 more cards. Teams slow down as the easy cards run out and the actor gets tired. If you want a tight, high-energy game, 60-second turns keep everyone sharp. If you want kids or shy players to score, give them 2 minutes.
Streaks barely move with round length: the longest run of correct guesses in a row sits around 6 whatever the timer says. A streak of 6 means the actor and the guessers have found a rhythm, and it usually happens once per round, not twice.
The most popular decks, and how hard they are
| Deck | Rounds | Typical correct | Average correct |
|---|---|---|---|
| Animals | 659 | 4 | 6.0 |
| Act It Out | 326 | 7 | 11.9 |
| Emotions | 175 | 6 | 7.1 |
| Impressions | 169 | 7 | 8.8 |
| Food | 66 | 6 | 8.4 |
| Jobs & Sports | 33 | 6 | 9.1 |
Animals is the deck people reach for first, and it is also the one they score lowest on. That surprised us until we watched a few rounds: a dog, a cat and a horse are easy, but an otter, a flamingo and a sloth take real acting, and guessers run out of animal names fast. Act It Out, which is everyday actions like brushing your teeth or paddling a canoe, is the easiest deck by a distance because the actor can simply do the thing.
Emotions sits in the middle. Faces are quick to make, but “nervous”, “embarrassed” and “proud” look alike from across the room, so teams burn time on near-misses.
The rest of the catalogue has too few rounds for firm conclusions yet. Early signs: Sports and Body Parts score high (lots of obvious actions), Dating and Chores score low (abstract situations).
What is a good score?
Use the medians above as the bar. Beating the typical score for your round length means you are doing better than half of all teams:
- 60 seconds: 4 or more is good, 7 or more is excellent.
- 120 seconds: 7 or more is good, 10 or more puts you in roughly the top quarter.
- 180 seconds: 9 or more is good, 12 or more is excellent.
Because decks differ so much, compare scores within the same deck. A 5 on Animals is a better performance than a 7 on Act It Out.
How to use this when you host
- Pick the timer for the group. Mixed ages or first-timers: 120 seconds. Competitive adults: 60 seconds and more turns each.
- Start easy, finish hard. Act It Out or Impressions for the first round so everyone scores, then Animals or Emotions once people are warmed up.
- Score per deck, not across decks. If teams play different decks, compare each result with the deck’s typical score rather than with each other’s raw totals.
- Expect one hot streak. Most rounds contain one run of 5 or 6 quick guesses. If your team is stuck, pass fast to find the next run rather than grinding a hard card.
We will update this page as more rounds come in, and add the decks that are still too thin to report. The charades generator on this site uses the same four free decks shown in the table, so you can test your own group against these numbers right now.
