Thanksgiving Games for Adults: 12 Ideas That Work at the Table

Thanksgiving games for adults in 30 seconds

The best Thanksgiving games for adults are the ones you can play without leaving the table or learning long rules. Run one game during dinner, one before dessert and one bigger game after the dishes. Here are the twelve that hold up best with a full stomach and a mixed crowd:

• During dinner: bingo, table talk cards, would you rather
• Before dessert: team trivia, thankful ABCs, a scrambled words race
• After the dishes: charades, an escape room, a blind cook-off or pie ranking
• No printing needed: guess the dish, two truths and a lie, a toast relay

What you need before guests arrive

Most of these games need paper, pens and ten minutes of prep the night before. Print on US Letter. Use card stock for anything you cut apart and pass around, because thin paper slips get gravy on them fast. Put cut cards in a bowl, keep answer keys in your pocket, and pick a scorekeeper who is not also the cook.

Decide on prizes ahead of time. Adults compete harder for small, silly stakes than for real gifts: the first slice of pie, the last roll, the leftover plate of their choice, or a pass on dish duty.

• Pens or pencils for every player
• A bowl or basket for cut cards
• A phone timer for timed rounds
• A simple scoreboard (one row per player or team, one column per game)
• Small prizes, or a dish-duty pass for the winner

12 Thanksgiving games for adults, step by step

Games 1 to 8 match the pages in our Friendsgiving Games Bundle, so the counts below are what you get if you print that set. You can also make your own versions with index cards.

• 1. Thanksgiving trivia. Split into teams of three or four and read 20 questions out loud, from the Mayflower and the Wampanoag leader Massasoit to what a baby turkey is called (a poult). Teams write answers; the host keeps the answer key. Highest score takes first pick of pie.
• 2. Dinner bingo. Hand out cards as people sit down. Squares are things that actually happen at the meal: someone goes back for seconds, the rolls run out, a debate about the best pie, someone mentions Black Friday. The bundle has 10 different cards, and five in a row wins. It plays itself all night.
• 3. Would you rather. Draw a card, everyone picks a side, then defends it. Our deck has 24, like "host every year or never host again" and "wash all the dishes or cook the whole meal." The defending is the game.
• 4. Table talk cards. Pass a card around and take turns answering. Good for in-laws and new partners: "What's a food tradition from your family?" or "What tradition would you start with this group?" The bundle includes 24.
• 5. Find a guest who. A 16-square mixer for the hour before dinner. Guests hunt for someone who has cooked a whole turkey, speaks more than one language, or traveled the farthest today, and write their name in the square.
• 6. Thankful ABCs. Set a five-minute timer. Everyone writes one thing they are thankful for for each letter, A to Z. Score one point per letter and two points for an answer nobody else wrote, which keeps it from turning into a list of "family" and "food."
• 7. Scrambled words race. Twenty scrambled Thanksgiving words (GRATITUDE, CASSEROLE, WISHBONE). First to finish with all correct wins. Quiet, competitive and good while the turkey rests.
• 8. Charades. Teams get 60 seconds per card. The adult-friendly prompts land best: "unbuttoning your pants," "hiding the last slice of pie," "stuck in holiday traffic." The bundle has 24 prompts.
• 9. Escape room. Our Thanksgiving Escape Room gives a team 45 minutes and 6 puzzles to find a 5-digit code that opens Grandma's recipe box. It is written for ages 8 and up, so for an adults-only table use the harder setting from the host guide: 30 minutes and only 3 hints for the whole game. Two or more teams can race with one puzzle set each.
• 10. Blind cook-off. Ask a few guests to bring a pot of chili (or a pie) and give each one a number. Three to five judges taste by number only, never by cook name, and guests cast a people's choice vote. Our Chili Cook-Off Kit has the scorecards, ballots, entry number signs and an Excel tally that ranks the winners.
• 11. Guess the dish or rank the pies. No printing needed. Blindfold one player and have them name a side dish by taste, or set out every pie and have the table rank them on paper before anyone sees who made what.
• 12. Two truths and a lie, or a toast relay. Each person shares two true things from this year and one made-up one, and the table votes. Or go around the table and have each person finish the last toast with one sentence of their own.

Pick games by group size and setting

Six or fewer at a small dinner: table talk, would you rather and two truths and a lie. Nobody has to stand up, and the conversation does the work.

Eight to twenty friends or family: bingo during the meal, team trivia before dessert and charades after. That is three games, which is plenty for one evening. If kids are there too, put them on mixed teams for trivia and let them be the code writers in the escape room.

Thanksgiving games for adults at work: keep it to 15 or 20 minutes. Trivia in teams, a scrambled words race, or find a guest who as a lunch icebreaker all work in a break room. Skip anything that asks people to share personal stories with coworkers, and skip the blindfold.

Common mistakes (and easy fixes)

Most game plans fail for the same few reasons. None of them are about the games.

• Starting too late. Once people are in a food coma, nobody wants to stand up. Run the active game before pie, not after.
• Too many games. Print more than you need, but plan for three. Leaving games unplayed is fine.
• The host runs everything. Hand trivia to one guest and the scoreboard to another so you can actually sit down.
• Lopsided teams. Count off by number instead of letting people pick teams, so couples and siblings get split up.
• Rules nobody hears. Read the rules once, out loud, before anyone starts. For charades, say the 60-second limit before the first card.

Printable Thanksgiving games for adults

If you want all of this ready tonight, the Friendsgiving Games Bundle is an 18-page US Letter PDF with all eight table games: 20 trivia questions with an answer key, 24 would you rather cards, 10 bingo cards, a 16-square find a guest who, thankful ABCs, 20 scrambled words with a key, 24 charades cards and 24 table talk cards. Page 1 has hosting tips and a party scoreboard for up to eight games. You can get it on Etsy.

For a bigger after-dinner game, the escape room is a 12-page PDF with a host guide, two hints per puzzle, an answer key, a certificate and envelope labels. Setup takes about 10 minutes. You can see the escape room on Etsy. Planning the food side too? A potluck sign-up sheet stops the three-bowls-of-mashed-potatoes problem. Everything for the season is in our Thanksgiving and fall section.

Related ideas

Hosting more than one party this year? Our holiday party games guide sorts games by occasion and group size, from Friendsgiving through New Year's Eve. If your crowd moves straight from turkey to a gift swap, the white elephant dice game rules work with one die and a timer.