Catchphrase is an
electronic word game, a combination of
cluing games with
hot potato. An
even number of people (works well up to about 10 or 12) are divided into two
teams which sit in alternating positions around a circle. One player starts the Catchphrase device and tries to
clue the word on the device to his teammates. When they guess it, he passes the device to the next player who presses a button to get the next word.
Clues are pretty free-form, but you can't say the word or part of a phrase that you're cluing, you can't say a rhyming word as a sounds-like clue, or any other similar way to try to get around these rules.
All the while, a partially random timer is running in the device, counting down with a series of beeps which get closer and closer together as time is running out. When time runs out, the opposing team of whoever is holding the device scores a point. That team also gets to make a single guess as the word that was being clued, and if they get it right they score an additional point.
The first team to reach seven points wins the game.
There are 10,000 words in the device, divided into 10 categories such as history. But in all the games I've played, people always just play the everything category, which uses all the words.