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Multiplayer · 2–16 players · no sign-up

Draw and Guess

One player draws, everyone else races to type the word. Open a room, send the link, and you are playing in about ten seconds — no account, no download, and words written for17 languages rather than translated into them.

You get a link. Anyone who opens it is in — no account, no download.

Nobody around to play with?

Drop into a room where people are already waiting. No link needed.

How a round works

  1. One player gets a word

    The word only ever reaches the person drawing. Everybody else sees the number of letters, and a letter or two opens up as the clock runs down — so a hard word stays winnable without anyone having to give it away in the chat.

  2. Everyone else types

    Guesses go in the chat and the earlier you get it the more you score. Miss by one letter and the game quietly tells you that you are close — only you, so a near miss never becomes a hint for the whole room.

  3. Then the pen moves on

    The word is revealed, points go up, and the next person draws. Everyone draws the same number of times, so nobody spends the whole game watching.

The same game, under a different name

Almost every country has its own name for this one, and they are usually older than any website. In Taiwan it is 你畫我猜, which more people search for than any brand in the category. In Korea a whole generation calls it캐치마인드 after the game they grew up on, even though what they actually want now is 그림 맞추기 that opens in a browser tab. German television gave it Montagsmaler, Japan calls itお絵描きクイズ, and Brazil and Portugal both saydesenhe e adivinhe. Same game every time: one pen, one word, and a room full of people shouting.

We use the English name in the address bar so that links stay clean when they are pasted into a group chat, but the game itself does not care which of those you came looking for.

  • 日本語お絵描きクイズ
  • 한국어그림 맞추기
  • 繁體中文你畫我猜
  • 简体中文你画我猜
  • EspañolDibuja y adivina
  • Português (Brasil)Desenhe e adivinhe
  • Português (Portugal)Desenha e adivinha
  • FrançaisDessine et devine
  • DeutschMontagsmaler
  • РусскийРисуй и угадывай
  • Bahasa IndonesiaTebak gambar
  • हिन्दीबनाओ और पहचानो
  • বাংলাআঁকো আর অনুমান করো
  • العربيةارسم وخمّن
  • KiswahiliChora na kisia
  • FilipinoIguhit at hulaan

Why the words are written, not translated

The most common complaint about the big draw and guess sites in Korea is that the words read like a dictionary rather than like Korean, because the list was translated out of English in one pass. It is a small thing that ruins the game: you spend the round arguing about the word instead of drawing it. So every language here has its own list — 200 words in English and a separately chosen set in each of the other 16, picked for being drawable rather than for matching an English word one to one. Nothing is generated, and nothing that only makes sense in one country gets exported into the others.

Answers are checked in the same spirit. Typing カタカナ where the word is in hiragana still counts, so does a Korean answer written with a space in the wrong place, a Chinese answer typed in simplified characters when the room is in traditional, a German answer spelled with ss instead of ß, and a French answer with the accents left off. Being right and being told you are wrong is the fastest way to make somebody close the tab.

The word does not leak

This matters more than it sounds. If the answer is sent to everybody's browser and merely hidden on screen, anyone who opens the developer tools wins every round, and the game quietly stops being a game. Here the server sends the word only to the person drawing. Everyone else receives the number of letters, plus the one or two characters that open up as time passes — and those are chosen and revealed by the server, so there is nothing to look up. The person drawing has no chat, and once you have guessed correctly your messages only go to the people who already know.

If you are here for the words rather than the game

The word generator draws one at a time with a timer for playing on paper, the full list is on one page to print, and Doodle Dash is the sixty second version you can play on your own while you wait for everybody else to join.

Questions people ask

What is a draw and guess game?
One player is given a word and draws it with no letters, numbers or gestures allowed. Everyone else types what they think it is, and the faster you get there the more points you take. It is the same shape as the party game people play on paper, with the drawing appearing on everybody's screen line by line as it is made.
Do I need an account or a download?
Neither. Press the button, send the link to your friends, and pick a nickname when you land in the room. It runs in the browser tab on a phone, a tablet with a pen, or a laptop, and nothing is installed.
How many people can play?
A room holds 2 to 16 players. Two works — one draws, one guesses — but it comes alive at five or six, where the guesses arrive fast enough to be funny.
Can we play in a language other than English?
Yes. The host picks the word language for the room, and there are 17 of them. The words are not machine-translated from the English list — each language has its own set, chosen because those things are drawable and guessable by people who speak it. Answers are matched forgivingly too, so ネコ and ねこ both count, 자동차 and 자동 차 both count, and 貓 typed as 猫 counts.
What if somebody types the answer to be annoying?
They cannot. The person drawing has no chat at all, and once you have guessed correctly your messages only reach the other people who already got it. The answer itself is never sent to a browser that has not earned it — not hidden in the page, not sent and covered up. It is simply not there.
How is the score worked out?
A correct guess is worth between 50 and 100 points depending on how much time was left, plus a small bonus for being first, second or third. The person drawing earns the average of what the guessers made — so the way to score as an artist is to draw something everybody gets, quickly, rather than something nobody gets at all.

Next up

More to draw while the room fills up.