I’m not sure when or how we got our Taboo game, but we have played it for many years, usually when the children visit, and invariably over a glass of wine or two.  Officially, you need at least four players for Taboo (two teams of two) but sometimes that isn’t possible.  So I have developed rules for 3-player Taboo, as follows:

Every player plays for himself/herself.  The game consists of 12 rounds.  In each round, one player gives the clues, the second player guesses, and the third serves as referee and controls the timer.  If we name the players Alice, Bob and Chris, then the rounds proceed as follows:

Rounds 7-12 repeat the pattern of Rounds 1-6.  Extra rounds may be needed to break ties, but I will talk about that later.

It is possible for each player (including the referee) to score in every round.  The player giving the clues gets 1 point for every correct answer but gets a 1-point penalty for every word they pass or get buzzed on.  The player guessing the answers gets 1 point for every correct guess, but also gets a 1-point penalty for any word that is passed.  There is no penalty to the guesser if a clue gets buzzed — that applies only to the clue-giver.  Finally, the referee scores 1 point for every clue that gets buzzed.

For example, let’s say Alice is giving clues to Bob, and Chris is the referee.  Bob has five correct guesses, Alice passes on one word, and Chris buzzes Alice twice for illegal clues.   The scoring for that round is 2 for Alice (5 – 1 – 2), 4 for Bob (5 – 1), and 2 for Chris.

In this three-player version, there is a good chance that you will not need to play the final round to determine the winner.  If either Bob or Chris are leading going into Round 12, that person can simply refuse to play and walk away as the champion.

If your playing companions don’t care for that, you can all agree to play by the Skunk Rule: If the two active players in a round do not have at least one correct answer, then the team has been skunked and its players are penalized: their scores are reset to the lowest score of all players before the round was played, with a minimum penalty of 2 points.  The referee scores 1 point if a team is skunked.

If the leaders are tied after Round 12, they can agree to either end the game as co-winners  or else play three “overtime” rounds (Rounds 1-2-3) to break the tie, with the scores being added to the current totals.  In the latter case, the player who is behind after Round 12 can come back to win the game if he or she scores enough points in overtime.

Note: This is one of the most popular posts on this site, based on search results.  It even inspired one reader (see comments) to create a site to help manage the scoring and timing!