How to play Codenames, a game of wordy subterfuge.
Watch the Video
Read the Rules
The aim of the game
In codenames you’ll work in a team, racing to lead your partners to the names of their agents on a grid, using just 1 word clues.
To set up
- Shuffle the word tiles and lay 25 in a 5x5 grid.
- Split into teams of 2 or more and choose a spymaster in each. They sit on the same side of the table. The other players are operatives.
- Choose a key card randomly. Only the spymasters may look at it, this will determine which words they must make their operatives guess. Red for the red team and blue for the blue team.
- The black tile marks the assassin, if anyone guesses this word, their team loses immediately!
- Put the red agent cards in front of the red spymaster, blue in front of the blue and the bystanders and assassin between the two.
To play the game
The team with 9 words, indicated by the lights around the edge of the card, begins. Give their spymaster the extra agent tile, flipping it to their colour.
Now the starting spymaster gives a clue, to try and make their operatives guess as many of their agents' names on the grid as possible. After a clue they state a number, to imply how many names on the grid they hope their team can guess
- Clues must be just 1 word, in english.
- You cannot give extra hints.
- You cannot use words that are on the table or contained within them.
- Letters and numbers are valid clues, however, they must relate to word’s meanings, not the letters in it, or their positions on the grid.
- For example, you can’t give clues relating to word locations, or say ‘B:3’ if 3 of your words begin with a B.
- Words that sound the same or are spelt the same as those on the table are not allowed.
- Whether you allow Proper Names, Homonyms, Rhymes, Acronyms, Abbreviations and Compound words is up to you.
If someone's taking too long to think
of a clue, you can use the sand timer, but that’s up to you.
Now the operatives of that team may talk among themselves before making a guess. When ready, they touch a card to indicate. If they correctly guess a word, their spymaster covers it with one of their colour agent cards.
You must make at least one guess. As long as you guess correctly, you can guess as many times as the number the spymaster said, plus 1. You can guess words based on clues given previously if you like.
If you guess a word belonging to no one, cover it with an bystander tile and end your go immediately. If you guess another team’s word, cover it with their colour agent and end your go. If you guess the assassin it’s game over!
Game end
The first team to guess all their words, without guessing the assassin wins!
For advanced players, spymasters can say ‘0’ or ‘unlimited’ after their clue.
- ‘0’ means their clue isn’t related to any of the words and the operatives can make as many guesses as they like, until wrong.
- Unlimited means their clue is related, but their team can guess as much as they like until wrong.
The downside is this clue leaves operatives with no idea how many words to guess!
There’s separate rules for 2 players and Codenames Duet has been made especially.
That’s Codenames, a game of secret words and efficient clues.
Enjoy!