Homophone word games are games that use pairs or sets of homophones to create humorous and clever plays-on-words

Word play

Word play or wordplay is a literary technique in which the words that are used become the main subject of the work, primarily for the purpose of intended effect or amusement...

. They often involve the creation of a puzzle to which the answer is a pair of homophones.

Homophones (game)

"Homophones" is a word game

Word game

Word games and puzzles are spoken or board games often designed to test ability with language or to explore its properties.Word games are generally engaged as a source of entertainment, but have been found to serve an educational purpose as well...

 in which a player creates a sentence or phrase containing a pair or larger set of homophone

Homophone

A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as rose and rose , or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot, or to, two, and too. Homophones that are spelled the same are also both homographs and homonyms...

s, substitutes the homophone pair with another (usually nonsensical) pair of words, then reads the newly created sentence out loud. The object of the game is for the other players to deduce what the original homophone pair is. The first person to correctly identify the secret homophones "wins" for that sentence and creates a new homophone puzzle.

Like the word game "Ghost"

Ghost (game)

Ghost is a spoken word game in which players take turns adding letters to a growing word fragment, trying not to be the one to complete a valid word. Each fragment must be the beginning of an actual word, and usually some minimum is set on the length of a word that counts, such as three or four...

, this game is often played on long car rides with multiple people.

Gameplay Example

The player creating the puzzle first thinks of a pair of homophones, such as "tax" and "tacks," then places the words into a coherent sentence. For this example, the player decides the sentence will be, "George had to pay a sales tax when he bought a box of tacks." The player then chooses a word to substitute for both homophones in the homophone pair. Let us say that he chooses the word "chicken". He then says aloud to the other players,

"George had to pay a sales chicken when he bought a box of chicken."

The player that created the sentence then tells the other players which pair of identical words, in this case "chicken", has replaced the homophone pair. The other players then try to think of the correct homophone pair.

Humor

"Homophones" allows for, and in fact necessitates, the generous use of humor. The freedom to substitute any word for the homophones lets players create a wacky sentence or phrase not unlike the game Madlibs.

Variations

A fairly common variation of this game goes by the same name and is almost exactly the same. The only difference is that instead of substituting both homophones in the homophone pair with a word, the space is merely left blank. This is represented either by saying "blank" where the homophones would be in the sentence or by not saying anything in that space. However, this version is less common because of the clarity issues that can arise due to the empty space in the sentence ("George had to pay a sales when he bought a box of" is very awkward without more in-depth explanation). It is also widely regarded as a lot less fun.

Homophone Humor (game)

"Homophone humor" is a game in which a question is asked that can be answered by using two or more homophones in a phrase or sentence. The question is often accompanied by a picture that displays a scene that the answer might be used to describe.

Gameplay Example
The person who is creating the puzzle thinks of two or more homophones and a question that can be answered with a sentence or phrase containing them. A possible pair might be "bear" and "bare." In this case, one question might be "What is a big animal that has no fur?" and the answer would be "A bare bear." The person then might make a picture of a bear that is completely without fur to provide a hint. The person then will display the question and picture to someone or a group of people, who will try to guess what the answer is. Sometimes, if a person guesses the answer, they are also required to spell the homophones and have them in the right order before they "win" that question. This makes sure the person did not just make a lucky guess. Here, they would have to say "b-a-r-e b-e-a-r", not "b-e-a-r b-a-r-e" or "B-a-y-e-r b-e-a-r" (or some other misspelling of one or both of the homophones).