Taboo Database
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One of our favorite pastimes over winter break is to play Taboo, a popular board game from Milton Bradley. Billed as “The Game of Unspeakable Fun”, Taboo is a spoken word game that involves trying to get your team to guess a secret word without using any of five clue words specified as “taboo”. How, for example, would you describe the word kitten without using the words meow, cat, purr, furry, or animal? As a player gives clues, he is constantly monitored by a member of the opposing team; if he makes any mistakes, he is unceremoniously “buzzed” and a point is deducted from his team’s score. |
There are many ways to succeed in Taboo. Hand gestures, sound effects, and “sounds like” clues are prohibited, but legal clues can consist of suggestive sentences, song lyrics, fill-in-the-blanks phrases, or even one-word hints. Here’s an example: How would you suggest the word diamond to your team if you couldn’t say baseball, carats, ring, jewel, or engagement? Here are some possibilities:
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 “Rolex makes gold ones…” |
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My friends and I play Taboo a lot. Our games extend late into the night and often consume the entire deck of 504 cards. You might say that we have evolved Taboo playing to an art form. If I say aquatic animal, my teammates won’t say fish, they’ll say barracuda. Why? Because they know that there is no fish card, but there is a card with the word barracuda. |
| Most people accuse us of memorizing the cards, which isn’t really fair. We don’t try to memorize the cards; we’ve just played so frequently that we start to remember them. The effective result is that we’ve established clues for nearly every card. If there were a professional Taboo tournament, I think that my friends and I would be serious contenders for the world championship title. If I say film, my teammates will immediately name Citizen Kane, Alien, and Blade in rapid succession, since those are the only three film titles contained in the Taboo deck. Mention anything to do with Russia, and they’ll spout off Sputnik, Red Square, and Glasnost — the only three Taboo cards related to this subject. Playing Taboo at this level of expertise makes for some interesting games; the problem is that nobody wants to play with us anymore. One night we gave our opponents a 100-point handicap — and then lost by only one point. |
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Blackjack dealers derive almost no thrill from a game of blackjack. They’ve memorized the best course of action for every possible hand, so what is a game of skill for many has become for them a game of chance. The same could be said of us and Taboo. Once you’re familiar with all of the cards, the game play becomes somewhat mechanical. That’s why we need your help. I’ve created a system that allows you to easily create new Taboo cards for us to use. Click here to give it a try. |
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Hi, you really need to somehow make the submitted Taboo question cards printable so that we can use them too! Great idea btw…I’ve submitted a bunch of good ones
Comment by Dave — September 17, 2006 #
Here here, I’ll second that. Awesome idea, and browsing through they appear mostly good. May I request a copy of the database, including the ratings?
Comment by Matt — September 25, 2006 #
Wow, a huge database of Taboo words..execellent! I wished I could print the cards though. Hope that you can provide that option. Cheers!
Comment by David — October 30, 2006 #
Can you share the database? Please!
Comment by Steve — December 6, 2006 #
Great idea, and I submitted some cards…but you should make the database available to everyone and printable.
Comment by Mark — January 2, 2007 #
Love the user-generated taboo card idea! Are you considering making it shared? Thanks if you do!
Comment by Andy — March 19, 2007 #
Hi
Can you share this database?
i want it to try play this game with my friends here im brazil i can’t find this game
thanks
Comment by David — October 29, 2007 #
Hello, This is an awesome idea! I have some database skills. I’d love to help you make the database accessible to the public.
Comment by Will — December 2, 2007 #
Hi there!
/Please/ share the database, I desperately want to play it the day after tomorrow!!
Comment by taboo fanatic — December 3, 2007 #
Is there any way to see and print the database or is it just for your own use?
We love the game, but need new cards.
Comment by joni — December 5, 2007 #
Can you please share the database? I’m hooked on taboo and desperately need new words.
Comment by Deidre — December 22, 2007 #
question for you: would you say using the word “liquid” for describing “liquor” is allowed? It was not one of the taboo words. And, how about “clean” if the word was “tissue” but one of the taboo words was “Kleenex?” We had huge arguments over these words… what do you think?
Comment by Raisa — December 25, 2007 #
i’m a taboo addict. please share your database so that my friends won’t think i’m cheating.
thanks.
Comment by terri — December 26, 2007 #
Our friends and neighbors are all “hooked” on Taboo but need to get addtional cards because we all know the ones that come with the game…It’s a shame more cards are not availble.
Comment by duncan webster — January 1, 2008 #
WTF, share the wealth already! Or if you want to make money, start up a page that gives you ad revenue and gives us at least pieces of the data base… But you have it and we want it, so figure out a way to make us all happy!
Comment by Rob — January 5, 2008 #
Have you made the database available at this point??
Comment by Stephanie — January 21, 2008 #
Hi everyone,
I’ve been meaning to make some improvements to the database, including a “print cards” feature. I’ve received many similar requests over the years. Perhaps I’ll get around to improving the Taboo database one of these days, but in the meantime, here is a link where you can print out all of the cards with an average rating of 2 or greater:
http://www.monzy.com/cgi-bin/allcards.cgi
You probably will still want to throw out some of them, as people submit a lot of really crappy cards. Enjoy!
Comment by monzy — January 23, 2008 #
This looks like a taboo refill. eh? I”m like santa.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/10721
Comment by mike D — September 26, 2008 #
Thanks so much monzy for making some printable, how bout all of them!
Comment by Mish — November 6, 2008 #