Codenames Rules

Codenames splits each team into two very different jobs — one player who can see the whole answer key and has to communicate it in exactly one word at a time, and everyone else who's guessing blind — and almost the entire game lives in the gap between what the spymaster knows and what a single word can safely convey.

Setting up the grid

Twenty-five word cards are laid out in a 5×5 grid, visible to everyone. A double-sided key card, seen only by the two spymasters, secretly marks which words belong to each team, which belong to neither team (the neutral "bystanders"), and which single word is the assassin. Depending on which team goes first, that team typically has one more word to find than the other.

The spymaster's clue

On a team's turn, their spymaster gives a clue consisting of exactly one word plus a number — for example, "ocean, 2" — where the word is meant to point toward two or more of their own team's words on the grid without ever literally appearing among them or containing any of them. The number tells the guessing team how many words on the grid the clue is meant to connect to.

Guessing

The rest of the team discusses and points to one word at a time, and the spymaster (without speaking, beyond confirming or not) reveals which category that word belonged to by covering it with the matching colored marker. A correct guess (a word belonging to the guessing team) lets them keep guessing, up to one more guess than the clue's stated number; an incorrect guess — hitting a neutral bystander, the opposing team's word, or, worst of all, the assassin — ends the team's turn immediately.

The assassin: instant loss

One single word on the grid is the assassin, known only to the spymasters. If either team's guessers ever select that word, their team loses the game immediately, regardless of how many of their own words are still unrevealed — which is exactly why cautious spymasters often avoid clues that could plausibly connect to the assassin word, even at the cost of a less efficient clue.

Winning normally

Short of hitting the assassin, a team wins by being the first to have every one of their own words revealed on the grid. Because guessing the wrong team's word doesn't lose the game outright (only the assassin does), teams sometimes deliberately guess conservatively — taking only the guesses they're confident about and stopping rather than risking a bystander or the opposing team's word on a shakier guess.

Strategy: the tension in a spymaster's clue

A clue connecting many words at once is efficient if it lands, but riskier, since it has more ways to go wrong across the grid; a clue connecting to just one word is safer but slower. Good spymasters weigh which of their own team's words are getting harder to safely reach for the rest of the game as more of the grid gets revealed, and often clue toward a word that's becoming dangerously easy to confuse with an opponent's or the assassin's while the option is still open.

Origins: a 2015 design by Vlaada Chvátil

Codenames was designed by Czech game designer Vlaada Chvátil and first published in 2015 by Czech Games Edition, quickly becoming one of the best-selling and most widely recommended modern party games, credited in large part for how cleanly its core one-word-clue mechanic scales from a casual four-player game to a much larger group split into two big teams. It remains an actively published, trademarked commercial game with several licensed variants (including versions using images or other themed content instead of the standard word grid).

The arguments this game actually produces

Tables argue most over whether a spymaster's clue word is legal when it's a valid word that merely sounds like or shares a root with one of the grid words rather than being identical to it — most rule sets ban any clue word that's a form of a grid word (plurals, other tenses of the same root) but allow a clue that's simply related in meaning or sound without sharing the same root. It's worth agreeing on this before the first clue of the game rather than mid-round, since Codenames doesn't have its own page under Settle an Argument spelling out every borderline case in isolation.

Questions that come up mid-game

Can the guessing team choose to stop guessing early even if they haven't used all the guesses the clue's number allows? Yes — a team can pass and end their turn voluntarily at any point after their first correct guess, which is often the safer choice once they're unsure about continuing.

Does the spymaster have to use a number of 1 or higher, or can a clue apply to zero words? A clue can legally be given with the number "0," meaning it applies to none of the spymaster's own team's words directly but might still help the team avoid dangerous words elsewhere on the grid — guesses made off a zero clue are unlimited rather than capped by the stated number.