Think sweary adult / playground humour meets Cards Against Humanity. Create the rudest, most eyebrow-raising phrases possible from innocent-looking words. Try it. Make the filthiest phrase you can from "hobbit, birthday, orgy, secret."
(Email hello@notsafefourwords.com for retail orders.)
In a word: swearing. In two words: swearing and being a bit naughty. Okay, that's more than two words, but you get the idea.
Not Safe Four Words is my love letter to gloriously inappropriate humour and the beautiful chaos that ensues when you give people permission—safe behind the net curtains of their own home—to be rude, naughty and, if you feel brave enough, absolutely filthy. That's right. It's an over 18s playground-humour version of Cards Against Humanity.
Make each other laugh. Do not hold back.
Deal four cards to each player (3-5 players is best). Put the rest in the middle. Draw one from the remaining deck and place it face up. The player to the left tries to make a four-word phrase using that card and three other cards from their hand. If anyone laughs, even a snort or a titter, the player wins those cards and puts them in their pile of filth. Play continues to the left.
If you're a prude or a professor of something fancy, fear not. You can tell yourself it's a social experiment and that you're only playing it to "see what all the fuss is about". Just ignore the fact it'll have you crying with laughter, blushing like your Great Aunt Agnes and wetting yourself.
Alright, you beautiful, filthy-minded bastards, Not Safe Four Words is a game best enjoyed with 3-5 of your sauciest, sweariest, most easily corrupted mates (and absolutely not with your nan, unless she's into that sort of thing). This is the game where maturity is the enemy and utterly unrepentant filth is the goal.
Your mission
Take the words in your hand and on the table and forge them into the rudest, most childish, eyebrow-raising phrase you can. If it makes someone snort-laugh, blush, nod with a knowing smile, or gasp in horror, you’re doing it right.
1. Shuffle the deck like your life depends on it. This game has witnessed things. You want those cards properly mixed.
2. Deal four cards to each player.
3. Flip one card face up next to the deck. This is the communal filth pile. Treat it with respect. Or don’t.
4. The player to the dealer’s left goes first and clockwise, because anarchy is exhausting.
5. On your turn:
Use the words in your hand and the face-up card to form a deliciously dirty phrase of up to four words. It should be a phrase that would horrify, or entice, a vicar.
For example: if "hole" is on the table and you have "cake" and "juicy" and “Persian,” you could proudly declare "juicy Persian cake hole" with a straight face.
If it gets so much as a titter, a blush, a knowing smile, a giggle, a full on belly laugh, or even a groan (of pleasure or delight), it counts. You win those cards.
This is the point in the game where you might notice some of your mates questioning their life choices or asking—for a friend—what a Juicy Persian Cake Hole is and how one might go about interacting with it.
If a grammar nerd starts whining about sentence structure or punctuation, excommunicate them immediately—Pope’s orders. This is not an English exam.
6. If you win those cards—hoard them like the dirty little trophies they are. Keep them next to you.
7. Refill your hand back up to four cards and flip a fresh card onto the table for the next player.
8. If you’re too pure of heart, or just unlucky, and can’t form a filthy phrase, take back any cards you played and pass your turn in shame. Take some time to reflect and think about what you’ve done.
9. When the last card from the communal pile of filth is flipped over, this triggers the Final Round of Filth™—everyone takes turns to play whatever they can.
10. Scoring (for the competitive types among you who care about winning than loving and laughing):
If there’s a tie, the tied players must make a four-word filth masterpiece from their won cards. The rest of the players vote for the best one.
If there’s still a tie… just accept you both have a boob or ball sack of elite gutter-brain energy. Move on. There is actual to sex to be having as well as playing this game.
Another way to play
If you love a quickie, play by the Naughty But Nine Rules instead.
1. Lay nine cards out in a 3x3 grid.
2. Everyone has 30 seconds to write down as many filthy phrases as they can.
3. The player with the most phrases wins those cards.
4. Tied? Split the cards. One leftover card? Shuffle it back in.
5. Repeat until all the cards are gone. Biggest filthy card hoard wins.
Do not play this game with your elderly, purest church-going relatives unless you’ve already been cut out of the will. If you do, have an ambulance and priest on standby.
Avoid playing this in public places unless you enjoy horrified (but curious) side-eyes from respectable citizens.
Under no circumstances play this game in or near a Waitrose. It’s not the done thing. Doing so may cause the store to collapse in on itself in a super spectacular ball of fiery suppressed British humour longing for release. The Northern Lights can fuck off.
Now shuffle up, get crude, regret nothing.