Celebrities / Time's Up
Name that Name
The first time I played Celebrities at a convention, someone went through a table Matt Foley-style. Which would have been funny even if they were trying to get someone to say the name “Matt Foley” (or “Chris Farley”). But it was just wild gesticulating, followed by a trip, then a crash through one of those thin hotel-style tables thankfully not solid enough to cause serious injury.
Celebrities is listed as “public domain” in BGG, and it might very well be — it is clearly an extension of Charades, but with a twist. There are three rounds:
In the first round, the clue giver can say what they like (excepting the name1) and team-mates can guess as often as they like,
In the second round, you the giver can only give a one word clue, and team-mates can only guess once,
In the third round, no words allowed, and only one guess.
The twist is that you use the same “celebrities” in all three rounds. Which means a clever team-mate can incorporate a gesture into a clue, and so you can amaze people wandering by into wondering how a flick of the wrist can mean “Boutrous Boutros-Ghali” and not Spider-Man.2
Celebrities requires nothing more than some slips of paper (or business cards with a blank back), a 30 second timer (the clue giver is under pressure to get as many possible in the time), and a crowd. Everyone writes down 6-8 names (usually enough to make 45-60 total), then divides into teams. I played it extensively and introduced it to several groups. It is my wife’s favorite game.
Everyone who has played has stories or in-jokes3.
And it didn’t stay inside our circle. I cannot find it, but Entertainment Weekly had an article discussing how the game was sweeping through Hollywood in the mid- to late- 90s.4
Peter Sarrett’s Time’s Up! packages Celebrities for the mass-market. While BGG lists Celebrities as public domain, everyone I know said that it was Peter’s idea. I vaguely recall him discussing whether it could be marketed as a game … or perhaps a TV show5, several years prior to Time’s Up! 1999 release.
And in fact there was a TV game show last decade, Celebrity Name Game, which was based on Richard Gerrit’s, Patrick Lightheart’s & Laura Robinson’s Identity Crisis? … which was based on Celebrities.
Does that make Celebrities one of the most influential games of the 20th Century? Apart from my personal bias, I’m not sure. However, given human nature it seems to me that if Charades has lasted 500 years (assuming it isn’t older), then Celebrities will likely be played as long as humans have mass media entertainment. That has to count for something.
And how many games can say they spawned a game show?
Or sent a person through a table, only to quickly pop back up because he still had fifteen seconds to continue giving clues?
Or spelling the name or rhyming the name, etc
Old B.B.G. showed up way too often in our games, probably because it’s a funny name to say.
“Cello!” being of my favorites. And no, I’m not explaining.
I think it was Entertainment Weekly, but could be mistaken. (Searching “Celebrities” returns basically every article they’ve ever written). I do remember an anecdote where one (90s) celeb was complaining that has partner tried to get him to sound out “John Wayne” instead of simply saying “The Duke” as a clue.
Consider that my “Full Disclosure, I’ve known Peter Sarrett and played games with him,” although I have not seen him in decades and did not reach out to him for research into this article.