Almost everyday, the show features audience games. These games can be played with Ellen, guests or between members of the audience. All games involve a prize for all participants, whether they win or lose the game.

• Audience Humdinger – Audience members hum a song that Ellen or a guest has to guess; this is done two or three times.
• Aw Snap- Audience members are tied back to back and have to pull each other to reach apples on their end.
• Big Red or Big Rig? – In this Christmas themed game, Ellen shows close-up pictures of Santa Clauses and Truckers in which the audience has to try to guess which is which.
• Blindfolded Musical Chairs – 5 audience members are blindfolded and have to search for 4 stools which are normally brown or tan. Each time one chair is eliminated, like in regular musical chairs. Ellen will move the chairs from time to time, making it harder for the players. Once the show got attractive men to sit on the chairs, and female audience members had to sit on them. For Christmas, Ellen has the contestants sit on Santa’s Lap. This is one of Ellen’s favorite game.
• Celebrity – Ellen and/or a guest holds up names of celebrities that another guest has to correctly guess the name of, with clues from the other participant.
• Doughnuts for Dough- Two audience members put on large doughnut-styled padded rings from head to foot, and fight to take a bite out of a real doughnut on a string hanging from a pole held by Ellen. Ellen has described this as the “stupidest game I’ve ever seen in my life.” A one time variation changed the way the contestants got the doughnuts; instead of Ellen hanging a doughnut off a pole, she put many doughnuts on two wires and the players had to get as many doughnuts as they could in 30 seconds, and the player with the most won.
• Gogo-Nuts For Coco-Nuts- two members of the audience come out and stand next to a small table with a real coconut on it. Ellen then asks a question and the first person to answer picks up the coconut. If they answer correctly they get a chance to throw the coconut through a hole on a board. First person to make it through wins. When they first played this (September 24, 2009), the winning contestant made a hole in the board and won a trip.
• Gold-Digger- One audience member or at-home contestant has to get into the gold-digger case, and money will fly around as the person inside tries to catch it. Usually, Ellen will give them all of the money in there or more, even if they do not catch all of it.
• Guesstures- Hasbro game that Ellen plays on her show, where there are 2 contestants, and one is in the ‘hot seat’ and the other one waits. 3 Cards come up and Ellen has to act them out while the other person tries to guess them before the card disappears.
• I’m Gonna Rip Your Face Off – 5 Audience members get called down, and have to put on paper bags with funny faces on the bags (on their heads). When the music starts, they run around trying to rip each others bags off each others heads, and the person at the end with the bag still on their head, wins. “This is the stupidest game we have ever played, and I can guarantee you we will NOT play it again”
• I Scream, You Scream, I Can’t See My Ice Cream!- There are two teams with two people each. Both teammates are blindfolded, and they stand with one person behind the other, in front of a table which has a bowl of ice-cream on it. One teammate then attempts to feed the other, and the team that has eaten the most ice cream by the end wins.
• Know Or Go – It’s Tony’s and Ellens favorite game. Ellen asks a panel of 3 audience members standing on a raised platform various questions in the same category. If they get it right, they remain. If they get it wrong, they “go”, which means they drop through a trap door. This game isn’t determined in the order the questions go in.
• Mystery Word – Ellen has a word that she has to make one of her guests say; if they say it, the audience wins a prize. The guest is not made aware that a game is being played; however, Ellen usually succeeds in making the guests say the specified word. Ellen says: “The hardest word that I’ve ever gotten anybody to say, was ‘mushroom’. When Ellen plays this with an audience member, it is renamed: “Word of Mystery”.
• Newly-Wed Game – There are two teams of two Newly-wed audience members each. Before they play, each team member on both teams answers questions about their spouse. During the game, one team goes at a time with the questions and both teammates hold up their answers. If their answers match, the team earns one point. Ellen and Portia (Ellen’s wife Portia de Rossi) won this game when Portia was on the show.
• Norwegian Nosedive – There are two different teams. Ellen calls out a specific number of body parts for the players to have touching the ground, and the two players have to have only these parts touching the ground between the two of them.
• Obstacle Course, Of Course! - On set is an obstacle course that two people must go against each other on. Usually its different, but at the end every time they have to put on a hat with a pin on the hat, and pop a balloon that is hanging up.
• Pictionary – Ellen and one of her guests or an audience member play Pictionary on a dry-erase easel.
• Pictureka – Hasbro game that Ellen plays with 2 audience members. She shows a picture of an item and the contestant has to run up the isles of the audience members, trying to find that item that an audience member is holding up. The first person to get back with the item at the end wins.
• Squeal or No Squeal – Halloween game Ellen plays; She shows a video of people walking through a haunted house, and the audience has to guess if the people are going to scream or aren’t going to scream.
• SuMove It Move It – This is a game where there are two people picked from the audience that have to wear blown-up sumo costume and answer questions that Ellen will ask. If the contestant knows the question, he or she would have to run to the object (usually a Nerf Football) and the first person to obtain this object gets to answer the question first.
• The Marshmallow Game – Contestants try to eat marshmallows suspended on strings while tied to boards with rubber bands.
• Thru The Wall or Take A Fall – Audience members watch a video clip and decide whether they will fit through a piece of foam, or take fall into a pit of balls. Other times, the audience plays the game instead of watching the video clips.
• Your Face Rings A Bell – Three audience members must put together a puzzle of Ellen, and then ring a bell to win a prize.