How to Play Ghashim (مين الغشيم): Full Rules, Setup & Tips

Ghashim takes about a minute to learn and a single round runs 5–15 minutes, so it fits into any game night. Here is the complete rundown of how a round works, from setup to the final vote — plus a full worked example, exactly how voting and scoring work, the mistakes new groups make most often, and a few rule variants once your group has the basics down.

Steps

1. Gather 3 to 20 players in one room, or start an online room if you are playing across devices.
2. Pick a pack (Animals, Foods, Places, Professions, Movies, Egyptian Movies, TV Series, Egyptian Series, or Things), or choose All Packs to draw from every one.
3. The app secretly assigns the same word to every player except one — the spy sees that they are the spy but not the word.
4. Going around in turn order, each player gives a short, one- or two-word hint about the secret word without saying it outright.
5. The spy listens carefully and bluffs a plausible-sounding hint of their own, trying to blend in without knowing the real word.
6. After a round (or a set number of hint rounds), open the floor for discussion — question anyone whose hints felt vague or off.
7. Vote together on who you think the spy is.
8. Reveal the result: the group wins if they vote out the real spy; the spy wins by surviving the vote, or by correctly guessing the secret word if caught.

Tips

• Playing the spy: give a hint vague enough to survive, but specific enough that no one calls you out in the first round.
• Playing a detective: compare hints across players — a spy's hint often fits several possible words, not just one.
• Keep hints to one or two words; long explanations make it easier for the spy to reverse-engineer the secret word.
• Rotate who starts each round so the same player isn't always first or last to give a hint.
• With larger groups (10+), agree on a hint order in advance to keep the round moving quickly.

A Worked Example Round

Five players — Youssef, Mona, Tarek, Salma, and Ahmed — pick the Egyptian Movies pack. The app secretly hands four of them the word El-Lemby (the 2002 Mohamed Saad comedy). Ahmed is the spy: he knows he was picked, but not the word.

1. Youssef: He works at a swimming pool.
2. Mona: Mohamed Saad plays the lead.
3. Tarek: One of the most quoted Egyptian comedies ever.
4. Salma: The character talks in scrambled, nonsense phrases.
5. Ahmed (the spy, bluffing): It's an old film about a simple guy — vague enough to sound like a real hint, but old doesn't fit a 2002 release, and simple contradicts Salma's scrambled, nonsense line.

Salma pushes back: wait, if he's just a simple guy, why did I just say his lines don't make sense? Tarek notices Ahmed never confirmed Mohamed Saad's name, even after two other players pointed straight at him.

Four of five vote for Ahmed.

Ahmed was the spy. He didn't land a comeback guess, so Youssef, Mona, Tarek, and Salma each score as civilians who caught him.

Voting & Scoring

• Voting is simultaneous: every player, spy included, picks who they think the spy is — nobody sees anyone else's vote until all of them are in.
• A plurality decides the accused. If nobody has a clear top vote, the tied players get a 30-second discussion window, then a single revote restricted to just those tied names.
• If the revote ties again, nobody is eliminated that round and the spy survives by default.
• Scoring: civilians who correctly vote out the spy each earn 2 points; if the spy survives the vote instead, every spy earns 3 points.
• A caught spy gets one comeback guess at the secret word — guessing it right pays out 2 bonus points even though they were caught.
• Points carry across every round in a session. When you end the session, the results screen crowns whoever has the most points as the session champion.

Common Beginner Mistakes

Going first with a razor-specific hint.

The first hint sets the ceiling for how vague everyone else can be — naming something too exact hands the spy (and the whole table) too much to work with. Save specifics for round two.

Accusing on gut feeling alone.

A hunch isn't evidence. Compare each hint against the full word list from the pack you're using — if a hint fits five different words, that's your tell, not just a feeling.

Letting the same player go last every round.

If one seat always talks last, the spy gets a free pass to reverse-engineer the word from everyone else's hints. Rotate who starts each round.

Skipping the discussion phase.

Groups that jump straight from hints to a snap vote catch the spy far less often. Even 20–30 seconds of "whose hint felt off?" surfaces more than an instant vote.

Playing with fewer than 4 people.

Below 4, one wrong guess flips the whole round. Ghashim technically allows 3, but the deduction only gets interesting once there are enough hints to actually compare.

Rule Variants