Game guides

The colour-guessing party game, and how to give a good clue

One colour on a grid, one word, and a room that sees colour differently.

4 November 2026 · 6 min read

Illustration for A colour-guessing party game: how Colour Clue plays and how to give a good clue

The argument the game is built on

Ask a room whether "ocean" is blue or green and you will get both answers, each said with total confidence. Colour-guessing games are built on that disagreement. Colour Clue is PartyDen's: a grid of ninety-six colours, a clue of one word, and everyone dropping a pin where they think the colour is.

How a round plays

One player is the cue-giver. Their phone, and nobody else's, shows four cells from the grid, and they pick one. They give a one-word clue — "flamingo", "avocado", "bruise" — and every other player drops a pin on the grid. Then the cue-giver adds a second clue of up to two words, and everyone drops a second pin somewhere new.

The reveal shows the colour. A pin on it scores three, a pin next to it two, and a pin two cells away one. The cue-giver scores one for every pin within one cell, so a clever clue pays twice. The seat moves on, and when everyone has given clues, the highest total wins.

Colour Clue scoring
Where the pin lands	Guesser scores	Cue-giver scores
On the colour	3	1
Next to it	2	1
Two cells away	1	0
Further	0	0

How to give a good clue

The first clue should name a thing, not a colour. "Red" points at a whole column; "fire engine" or "tomato" points at a spot in it. Everyday objects with one famous colour work best: "banana", "denim", "pistachio", "mustard".

The second clue is for correcting the room. You have seen where the first pins landed, so use it to push them: if everyone went too dark, "early morning"; too green, "more teal". Two words is enough to say "but lighter".

And pick your colour from the four with the clue in mind. A colour you can name an object for is worth more than a colour that is merely pretty. Numbers and single letters are not allowed as clues, because "C7" is a coordinate, not a clue.

Playing with colour-blind friends

About one man in twelve has some colour-vision deficiency, which is a lot of people at a party. Every cell in Colour Clue has a coordinate as well as a colour — A1 to H12 — drawn on the edges of the grid and read out by screen readers, and the answer is always shown by coordinate. A colour-blind player can follow every round and talk about the grid by position. Like everyone else at the table, they will see some colours their own way, which is the game.

If your group likes this, try these

Wavelength is the same idea with words on a dial instead of colours. One Clue is the co-operative word game where everyone writes a clue for one guesser. And Codenames is the team version of finding the one word that points the room in the right direction.