DIY: Guess Who Game

Guess Who was one of my all-time favorite games growing up. Since some of our wedding guests don't know each other, we decided it would be fun to make our own version of "Guess Who."

Making the Photos

We started by gathering head shot photos of everyone and dropping them in a folder. Then I made a template in Photoshop with light grey borders and added their names below.

I sent these to be developed on 5x7 photo paper. I made these at a local CVS, but there are several online options as well.  I then applied a sheet of 3M double sided tape on the back and cut the photos to size using the grey borders for reference. If you don't have this, you can skip the tape and use spray-on adhesive to stick onto the wood pieces later. 

Make the Gameboard

I think the gameboard likely took the longest. We used CAD to design the board and pieces, then created 2D files to use for lasercutting. Since we have 50 guests and wanted to have two sets of boards with 25 people each, we ended up with 100 mini wood pieces. We etched in some localized depth on the individual pieces to align the hinges later. 

You can buy the same birchwood here.

When lasercutting these pieces, be sure to mask the top and bottom. We used painter's tape here. Otherwise, you end up with several burn marks along the way.

The gameboard is made of two pieces: the top frame and backer piece. We lasercut both and used Elmer's wood glue to adhere them together:

The fun (and most time-consuming part) is nailing in all the mini hinges. You can buy them from Amazon here. Despite what they say on the listing though, they're definitely nails, not screws.

We were definitely nailing for a few hours. Given the size of the nails and hinges, we used tweezers to hold the nails and the smallest hammer we could find.

And voila! Here's one of each set below. After playing one round, we packed up and called it a night.