The free forehead guessing game Forehead Guess

How to play Forehead Guess

You need one phone and at least one friend. One person guesses, everyone else gives clues, and the timer keeps things moving. It works for 2 to 20 players and gets loud fast.

1. 1Open Forehead Guess and pick a deck, or choose Mixed to play from all of them.
2. 2Set the round to 30, 60 or 90 seconds, then choose Solo or 2 to 4 teams.
3. 3The guesser holds the phone sideways against their forehead, screen facing out.
4. 4Teammates give clues for the word on screen. Describe it, act it out, sing it. Just don't say it.
5. 5Got it? Tilt the phone down. Stuck? Tilt it up to pass, and a new word appears.
6. 6When time is up, look over the words you got and passed, then hand the phone to the next team.

Keep going until everyone has had a turn as the guesser, or until one team pulls clearly ahead on the scoreboard.

Forehead Guess decks

Pick one deck, or choose Mixed to pull words from all of them. Every deck is family-friendly, and words never repeat within a game. Want inside jokes? Choose Your words and type at least 10 of your own. They stay saved on that device only.

Controls, teams and scoring

There are two ways to answer. Tilt is the classic: tilt the phone down for got it, up to pass. Tap is calmer and easier for kids: tap the bottom half of the screen for got it, the top half to pass. You pick one before you start.

On an iPhone, the first time you choose Tilt, your phone asks for permission to use motion. Allow it once and you're set. If you tapped Don't Allow by mistake, switch to Tap and keep playing.

Playing on a laptop? Press the down arrow for got it and the up arrow to pass. The screen stays awake during a round, so it won't dim mid-guess. If your phone's rotation lock is on, no problem: the game still shows sideways correctly. Sound can be switched on or off.

For a group, choose 2, 3 or 4 teams. Every word you get adds to your team's score, and the scoreboard keeps totals across rounds, so nobody has to do math on a napkin. Solo is the no-pressure option: one guesser, anyone can give clues, no teams to track.

Tips for better rounds

• Clue-givers, start broad and narrow down: “It's an animal. It lives in the ocean. It has eight arms.”
• Pass early. A word that isn't landing after five seconds rarely lands after twenty.
• Hold the phone flat against your forehead, so laughing and nodding don't trigger a pass by accident.
• Turn the brightness up so people across the room can read the word.
• Agree on house rules first, like whether rhymes or “sounds like” clues count.
• Use 30-second rounds for pure chaos and 90-second rounds when you want the guesser to build a streak.

Ways to play

Where Forehead Guess works best

Parties and holidays are the obvious fit. Nobody needs to learn rules ahead of time; thirty seconds of watching and they're in. For family game night, the Kids and Everyday things decks put grandparents and eight-year-olds on the same level.

In a classroom, open the game on a laptop, stand a student with their back to the screen, and let the class give clues while you score with the arrow keys. Load a vocabulary list into Your words and it turns into a review game in about a minute.

On road trips, passengers can play in the back seat with Tap controls. Keep the driver out of it and their eyes on the road. And when the group wants a change of pace, there are other ManyMini games that work on the same phone.

Where the forehead game comes from

Guessing a word you can't see is an old party idea. People played it with cards or sticky notes on their foreheads long before smartphones, under names like Who Am I? and Celebrity Heads. Apps such as Heads Up! moved the card onto a screen and added the tilt.

Forehead Guess is our own free take on that idea. It isn't that app and has no connection to it or the company behind it. We built it to run in any browser, with no download, no account and decks the whole family can play.

Questions