Guess Whom?

A modified version of the children's game "Guess Who," using images of friends

The standard rules of Guess Who?

Each player starts the game with a board that includes cartoon images of 24 people and their first names. The game starts with each player selecting a card of their choice from a separate pile of cards containing the same 24 images. The object of the game is to be the first to determine which card one’s opponent has selected. Players alternate asking various yes or no questions to eliminate candidates, such as “Does this person wear glasses?” Well-crafted questions allow players to eliminate one or more possible cards.

Our rules follow the same premise, but differ slightly so we can get some fun reactions and dig into our teammates a little deeper. Our rule changes are.

  1. You cannot ask questions about their physical characteristics
  2. You cannot repeat a question

So, instead of asking questions like, “Does your person have brown hair?” we would ask questions about this person’s character or behavior in situations. We found that hypothetical questions worked well, and added many more laughs, as both teams had to speculate on what this person might or might not do. Here are some sample questions.

  • Is your person in a long term relationship?
  • As a child could you imagine your person sharing their toys?
  • If you were on a sinking ship in the middle of the ocean, would being with this person make you feel more safe?
  • If your person was participating in a school play, would they choose to work backstage?

Build Your Own

You need:

  • Guess Who? game board. I bought mine on ebay for around $12.
  • A group of 24 people who all know each other fairly well, I used my ultimate disc team
  • Photoshop, or some other image editing software (the template files provided are Adobe Photoshop .psd files)
  • 3 Sheets of cardstock paper
  • Access to a color printer or you can use a copy center like Kinko’s

Template File Download

These are all built at 200dpi. Finding high resolution images of my friends online wasn’t possible, so I lowered the resolution to 200dpi. You can take these templates and increase the resolution to 300dpi for better print results.

Find a photo of each of the 24 people you plan to use in the game. The ideal photo clearly shows the person’s face, and has them facing directly towards the camera. You will need to ‘extract’ the person’s face from the photo so it can be placed into the template. After years of isolating photographs of stuffed animals for my work at Plushland, I have found that Photoshop’s Extract tool is the easiest method to knock out a background. Here’s a good Extraction Tool video tutorial on Youtube.

Remove the background from each of the photos of your group, and place them onto the Guess-Whom-Individual-Template.psd, sizing them appropriately. In the file, you will see three different “turtleneck” layers, one blue, one red, and one black. In the original Guess Who game, the draw cards, (the cards that you use to choose your player) all have the individuals in black turtle necks. Each board then has a Blue team and a Red team. Use the Guess-Whom-Individual-Template.psd to create the three colors of turtleneck for each person in your group. The turtleneck likely won’t line up for each person, so I left it as an editable path, which you can move to fit your individual’s neck using the pen tool. Here’s a decent Pen Tool video tutorial.

Once you have isolated each person, and made the three color versions, bring them into the Download Guess-Whom-Group-Template.psd. This .psd has guidelines that you can use to align your newly formed images. Make one  sheet each for the black, red, and blue turtlenecks. This file is sized to print, so you can print directly to your own printer, or save as a .pdf, and bring the files to a Kinko’s. Don’t save as a .jpg and try to print using the Windows image printer. That application tends to stretch and resize images to fit onto pieces of paper. If you can’t print directly from Photoshop, save as a .pdf and print that file without any scaling.

I printed the Guess-Whom-Patterned-Background.psd on the backs of the black turtleneck set of cards. It’s optional, but it makes it look a little slicker. Cut out the cards on the dotted line, and stick them into the Guess Who game board. You’re done!

We have played the game with two people, and with an entire team. Just split up evenly and take turns coming up with hilarious questions. It’s a ton of fun, and provided my ultimate disc team with hours of entertainment. Have fun with it!

If you have photos of a Guess Whom game board that you’ve made based of this post, send me a link in the comments. I’d love to see what other people come up with.