How to Play Try Not to Laugh

1. The straight-face player looks at each performer in turn and may not hide their face or look away.
2. Going clockwise, each performer has twenty seconds: a joke, a silly voice, a strange noise, a challenge from the host view — anything spoken or sung.
3. Performers stay in their seats and may not touch the straight-face player or use props.
4. Everything must be kind and fit for the youngest person present. Jokes about people in the room are off limits.
5. If the straight-face player cracks, the performer who did it scores a point and the round ends.
6. A straight-face player who survives every performer scores two points. Either way, the seat passes to the left.

What you need

Nothing. Voices only.

Nice to have:

• A timer
• Starter challenges from the host view

1. Seat everyone where they can see one another's faces — round a table is ideal.
2. Agree the line: a closed-mouth smile is allowed, but showing teeth or making any sound of laughter counts as cracking.
3. Choose the first player to keep a straight face, and someone to time twenty seconds for each performer.

Play until everyone has had the straight-face seat once; with fewer than five players, go round twice. The highest score wins, and a tie is settled by a stare-out between the tied players while the rest of the table performs together.

Players

3–12 players

Best with

4–8

Play time

10–20 min

Prep

No prep

Materials

No materials

Energy

Lively

Noise

Loud

Movement

Seated

Seated option

Works seated

Where

Dinner table, Living room, Small space, Outdoors

Times are editorial estimates, not test results.

Reading: None, unless a performer reads a challenge from the host's screen.

Try Not to Laugh needs at least 3 players and works for up to about 12. It is at its best with 4–8 players.

With more than twelve, play in two teams facing each other. One team sends a performer, the whole opposing team must keep straight faces, and every face that cracks is a point for the performer's team.

• Deadpan beats shouting. Tell performers that the quietest, most serious delivery usually wins.
• Keep turns to twenty seconds. A longer turn is hard on the performer, not on the straight face.
• Some people laugh at once and some never do. Praise the good attempts so that the game is not only about winning.
• If a child is in the seat, offer an easy mode — smiles of any kind are allowed, and only laughing counts.

Things to say with a perfectly serious face when you have no joke ready.

In a voice

• Read out tomorrow's weather forecast as a very tired dragon
• Sing the alphabet as a dramatic opera
• Count to ten like a robot running out of battery
• Order a pizza in the voice of a nervous owl
• Recite a nursery rhyme as a stern headteacher
• Explain the rules of this game as a sleepy sloth
• Thank everyone for coming, as a goose
• Describe the room as if you were selling it on television

With great seriousness

• Describe your breakfast as if it were breaking news
• Explain how to make a sandwich as a top-secret mission
• Introduce the person on your left as a famous explorer
• Give a sports commentary on someone at the table blinking
• Say "I am a serious potato" three times, more seriously each time
• Tell the story of your socks as a bedtime story
• Apologise to your chair for sitting on it
• Give a wedding toast to a spoon
• Announce the arrival of a very important snail

We recommend Try Not to Laugh in these collections:

• Games for Video Calls: 8 Party Games That Work on Screen

Traditional parlor game; this explanation, the example and the starter challenges are original to Gather & Play.

Editorially checked for clarity and consistency. We do not claim group playtesting for this page. Editorial policy.