Custom Word Lists: How They Work and How to Write a Good One

A custom list replaces the official words with your own: vocabulary a class is learning, in-jokes from a friend group, a film night theme. It is the feature that makes a round feel like it was made for the people playing. It also has sharp edges — answers must match exactly, and you cannot edit the list once the room exists — so it is worth knowing the rules before you paste.

Where to find it

Custom lists exist only in private rooms. On the home page choose Create room → Private room, and the list is the last field in the setup panel:

Public rooms always use the official list. That is deliberate: strangers have not agreed to your in-jokes.

How the game reads your list

These are the rules the game applies — the same code runs in the setup panel and on the server:

• Separators: commas, semicolons or new lines (Chinese and Japanese punctuation such as ， and 、 work too).
• Limits: up to 100 words; each word up to 24 characters. Anything past the limit is dropped, and the panel tells you when you hit it.
• Hints in brackets: cat (animal) makes “cat” the answer and shows “animal” to guessers. Hints are capped at 20 characters.
• Duplicates are removed, keeping the first one.
• Pasted lists are cleaned up: bullets like “- ” or “1. ” are stripped, and lines ending in a colon (“Food:”) are treated as headings and skipped. That matters if you generate a list with a chatbot — the panel even has a “Copy AI prompt” button for it.
• Answers must match the word as typed. Capital letters, spaces and hyphens are ignored, but nothing else: no synonyms, no plurals, no translations. With the official list a guess counts in nine languages; with yours, only your spelling counts.
• Locked after creation. There is no way to edit the list inside the room.

What players see

The drawer gets a choice of 2–5 words from your list (you choose how many), each with its hint:

Guessers see the hint and one blank per letter — in our test game that was “Guess (animal): _ _ _”. So the hint and the letter count are the only text clues your pack gives away. Choose hints with that in mind.

How many words do you need?

Every turn uses one word, and the game will not repeat a drawn word until the whole list has been used. So the minimum for a session without repeats is players × rounds:

• 4 players × 3 rounds = 12 words
• 6 players × 3 rounds = 18 words
• 8 players × 4 rounds = 32 words

In practice aim for two to three times that. The drawer sees several options each turn, and with a small list the same options come back often, so the choice stops being a choice. If the list is too short the panel warns you; the game still works, it just starts the list over.

Writing a list that plays well

• Mostly concrete nouns. Things with a shape (umbrella, lighthouse, snowman) get guessed; ideas (freedom, Monday) mostly do not. A few hard ones are fun; a list of them is not.
• Use the word people will type. Since answers must match exactly, write “phone”, not “smartphone”, unless your group would really say “smartphone”.
• Hints are categories, not clues. “bubble tea (drink)” helps; “bubble tea (the thing Anna orders every day)” gives it away.
• One language per list. In a mixed-language group, decide which language answers will be typed in and write every word in it.
• Keep it kind. Names of people in the room make great words only if everyone is fine with it. The same rules as the rest of the site apply: no slurs, no sexual terms, no personal details.

Three example lists

Starting points you can paste and edit — each is sized for about six players and three rounds.

Classroom English, kitchen topic:

spoon, fork, kettle, fridge, frying pan, oven, cup, plate, knife, sink, bread (food), cheese (food), apple (fruit), carrot (vegetable), egg, bowl, teapot, toaster, microwave, napkin

Office in-jokes (edit to fit your team):

coffee machine, standup, deadline, laptop, headphones, whiteboard, sticky note, printer, lunch break, calendar, mute button, pizza (food), plant, desk chair, email, video call, spreadsheet, keyboard

Easy mode for young children:

sun, cat (animal), dog (animal), house, tree, car, ball, fish (animal), flower, star, moon, boat, bird (animal), apple (fruit), hat, cake, rainbow, snowman

Good to know

• Drawings from custom-list rooms are never shared to the public Gallery, so private jokes stay private.
• The list is stored only inside the room and is deleted with it. Keep your own copy if you want to reuse it.
• Scores from private rooms do count toward the public leaderboard, which shows nicknames — worth telling students to use a nickname rather than a full name.