Listen Up!
Listen Up! Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Goal of the Game
Win the title of "great artist" by listening carefully to your "game leader" and drawing what you hear, then find the name of the drawn object.
Setup
Each player takes a drawing pad and a pencil. The cards are shuffled and placed in a single face-down pile. One player is named responsible for scoring. The score pad is entrusted to that player.
How to Play
On each turn, one player is the "game leader" and the others are the "artists." The oldest player begins as game leader. He takes the first card from the pile, looks at it without showing it to the others, and describes what he sees using only the "technical terms" described below. The artists try to draw on their pad what they hear.
The game leader will earn more points the greater the number of players who correctly identified the object.
The artists may not ask questions, and the game leader must not try to find out whether his instructions are clear. Sighing or laughing is allowed!
The artists follow the game leader's directions without looking at the other players' drawings. When the game leader says "finished" ("terminé"), each artist must write on their pad the name of the object they think they have drawn.
Then the card is shown and the points are counted.
The player to the left of the game leader becomes game leader on his turn. When playing with 3 to 5 players, each player is game leader twice. When playing with 6 or more players, each player is game leader only once.
Add up each player's points. The player with the most points wins!
Technical Terms
To describe the various objects, you may only use abstract words and geometric terms, never concrete words. For example, you may say "draw an oval in the center of the sheet," but you may not say "draw an egg in the center of your sheet."
"Draw a downward-pointing triangle, the horizontal line having disappeared" is acceptable.
"Draw a V" is not acceptable!
"Draw a concave circular arc" is acceptable. "Draw a smile" is not.
The players may agree among themselves to simplify the rule or, on the contrary, to make it more complicated.
Cards and Points
Drawing cards ("cartes-dessin"): these are the most common and the easiest to describe. Each correct drawing is worth 1 point for the game leader and 1 point for the artist.
Word cards ("cartes-mot"): these have only one word on the card, with no drawing. The game leader must imagine the object. The game leader receives 2 points for each artist who identified the word, and each artist who identified the word earns 1 point.
Speed cards ("cartes-vitesse"): these are more complex. The game leader describes the object as well as possible within a set time (the two minutes of the hourglass). When time is up, each player writes down the name of the object. The game leader receives 2 points for each artist who identified the word, and each artist who identified the word earns 2 points.
Penalties
Any artist who asks a question loses 1 point.
If an artist announces the name of the object before the game is over, it stops ("celle-ci s'arrête"), the artist loses 1 point, all the other players each gain 1 point, and the game leader gains 1 point per player (except the penalized player).
If the game leader gives false information, he loses 2 points and the game stops. The other players do not score any points.
Translator's Note
The French sheet, as scanned, repeats the final paragraph of the "How to Play" section (beginning "« meneur de jeu » 2 fois. Quand on joue à 6 joueurs ou plus...") a second time, directly after its first occurrence. This appears to be a printing duplicate. It is transcribed here once, as the paragraph's content is identical.