How to Play Guess Who? on a Video Call With Your Grandkids
How to play Guess Who? with your grandkids when you live in different homes. One printed page each, a pencil, and yes-or-no questions. Includes a free printable with 10 boards.
Guess Who? is one of the few games a five-year-old and a seventy-five-year-old can play as equals. It is also very easy to play on a video call, as long as you each have the same page in front of you.
You don’t need the board game with the flip-down faces. You need one printed sheet in each home, a pencil, and a bit of patience with the first few questions.
What you need
- The same printed Guess Who? page in both homes
- A pencil each
- A small scrap of paper to write your secret answer on
Our free printable has ten boards: animals, vehicles, dinosaurs, flowers, sea creatures, food, toys, robots, silly monsters and houses. Each board has twelve black-and-white pictures, and every picture has a number and a name. The numbers matter more than you would think. More on that below.
Send the PDF to your grandchild’s parents a day or two before the call, and ask them to print the page you are planning to use. Printing ten pages five minutes before a call is a lot to ask of a busy household. Printing one is easy.
How to play
- Each of you secretly picks one picture. Write its number on a scrap of paper and keep it out of sight.
- Take turns asking yes-or-no questions. “Does it have fur?” “Can it fly?” “Does it live in water?”
- Cross out every picture that doesn’t fit the answer. Use a pencil so you can erase and play again on the same page.
- When you think you know, make a guess. Get it right and you win the round. Then swap who asks and play again.
A round on the animal board
The animal board has a cat, a rabbit, an owl, a dog, a butterfly, a turtle, a pig, a frog, a fish, a hedgehog, a snail and a duck.
Say you have picked the turtle, number six. Your grandchild asks, “Can it fly?” No. They cross out the owl, the butterfly and the duck.
“Does it have fur?” No. The cat, rabbit, dog, pig and hedgehog go too.
Four pictures left: turtle, frog, fish and snail. “Does it have a shell?” Yes. That leaves the turtle and the snail. “Does it have legs?” Yes. Turtle.
Then you hold up your scrap of paper with a six on it. Always show the number at the end, even when they guessed right. Children check, and they remember who didn’t.
Why the numbers help
On a video call, two people are looking at two different pieces of paper, and small things get lost. A child might call the hedgehog “the spiky one” while you are thinking of the fish.
If you get stuck, use the number. “Is it number ten?” settles it in a second, and nobody has to hold the page up to the camera and squint.
The numbers also make it easier for a child who can’t read yet. They can point to a picture and you can confirm it by its number.
Making it work for different ages
Ages three to five. Skip the strategy. Take turns describing a picture and pointing to it. “It’s green and it jumps.” That is already a good game for a three-year-old, and they will want to do the describing next.
Ages five to eight. Play the standard way. If they ask a question that is hard to answer with yes or no, help them turn it into one. “What colour is it?” can become “Is it brown?”
Ages eight and up. Make it harder. Try a five-question limit, or pick a board where the pictures are similar to each other, like dinosaurs or robots. Older kids also enjoy being the one who decides which board to play.
When it doesn’t go to plan
Some rounds fall apart. Someone forgets to cross out a picture, or answers “no” when they meant “yes,” and the last picture standing turns out to be wrong.
It happens in every family. Laugh, reveal both numbers, and start again. A wrong answer is often funnier than a right one, and it doesn’t take long to play another round.
If your grandchild loses interest after two rounds, that is fine too. Two rounds of Guess Who? is a good call.
After the game
All the pictures are black and white, so once the game is finished the page works as a colouring sheet. Ask your grandchild to colour the picture that won, and do the same on your page.
Get the boards
The Guess Who? boards are part of our free Video Call Play Pack, together with two drawing games: Finish the Drawing and What Changed?
Get the free Video Call Play Pack
Which board would your grandkids pick first, the dinosaurs or the silly monsters?
