Twenty-five word cards on the table, two teams, and a spymaster who can only ever say one word and one number.
Publisher
Czech Games Edition
Cost
Board game purchase; a free online version exists
How often
Whenever you have a group
Time
15–30 minutes
The rules
Twenty-five word cards are laid out in a five-by-five grid.
Each team's spymaster sees which cards belong to which team.
A clue is exactly one word plus a number: the number says how many cards it points to.
Guessing an opposing card ends your turn and helps them.
Guessing the assassin card loses the game immediately.
What works
The best word-association game there is, and it is not close
Scales from four players to a large group without breaking
The one-word constraint produces genuinely inventive clueing
Rules explained in two minutes; depth lasts years
What doesn’t
Needs at least four people, so it is not a solo or two-player game
Wildly uneven if one spymaster is much stronger than the other
A single assassin guess can end a good game instantly
Clue quality depends on shared context — mixed groups struggle
Skip Codenames if: Anyone playing alone or in a pair, and anyone who wants a puzzle rather than a social game
Questions about Codenames
How do you play Codenames?
Two teams race to identify their own agents among twenty-five word cards. Each team's spymaster gives a one-word clue and a number, and their team guesses which cards it points to. Touching the assassin card loses the game outright.
Can a Codenames clue be more than one word?
No — one word only, plus a number. That constraint is the entire game; compound words and proper nouns are the usual house-rule arguments.
How many players do you need for Codenames?
Four is the practical minimum, two per team, though it scales comfortably to eight or more. There are separate two-player variants.
What happens if you guess the assassin in Codenames?
Your team loses immediately, regardless of the score. It is why cautious spymasters give lower numbers than they could.
Meldle is a different daily puzzle — four words sharing one missing pair of letters. Try today’s → It’s free, needs no account, and here is what it does badly.
