Cranium Whoonu

AI-friendly board game rules summaries — use with Claude, ChatGPT, or any AI assistant

Overview

Cranium Whoonu is a party game where players try to guess each other’s favorite things. Each round, one player is the “Whoozit” and the other players give them cards representing things they think the Whoozit likes. The Whoozit ranks them from least to most favorite, and gift-givers score points based on how well they guessed. The player with the highest score after everyone has been the Whoozit wins.

Components

Setup

  1. Give the Whoonu envelope to the first Whoozit.
  2. Distribute scoring tokens based on player count:
    • 3 players: use tokens 1-2-4, in stacks of 3
    • 4 players: use tokens 1-2-3, in stacks of 4
    • 5 players: use tokens 1-3-5, in each of 5
    • 6 players: use tokens 1-4, in stacks of 6
  3. Deal 4 cards face-down to each player from the shuffled deck.

Turn Structure

Each round, one player is the Whoozit:

  1. Gift Phase: Each player (except the Whoozit) chooses a card from their hand they think the Whoozit will like and puts it face-down in the Whoonu envelope.
    • 3-4 players: put TWO cards in the envelope
    • 5-6 players: put ONE card in the envelope
  2. Reveal Phase: The Whoozit takes the cards from the envelope, mixes them up, and places them face-up one at a time, reading them aloud.
  3. Ranking Phase: The Whoozit places one card face-down next to each stack of tokens, with the least favorite thing first (next to the 1 token). The Whoozit continues placing cards in order until the most favorite thing is placed.
  4. Scoring Phase: The Whoozit reveals each card. The player who gave that card takes the token next to it and gains those points.
  5. Next Round: Pass cards to the discard pile. The player to the left of the Whoozit becomes the new Whoozit and takes the envelope. Everyone draws cards to have 4 in hand.

Actions

Scoring / Victory Conditions

Special Rules & Edge Cases

Player Reference

Players Cards Given Token Values
3 2 each 1, 2, 4
4 2 each 1, 2, 3
5 1 each 1, 3, 5
6 1 each 1, 4