How to Play Codenames: Rules, Giving Clues and the Assassin Card

Codenames is a word-association game for two teams. It works from four players and gets better past eight, because a crowded guessing side is where the fun actually comes from.

Twenty-five word cards go on the table in a 5x5 grid. One player per team becomes the spymaster, and the two spymasters share sight of the key card showing which word belongs to which side.

The key card splits the grid: 9 agents for one team, 8 for the other, 7 bystanders and 1 assassin. The team with nine goes first.

A clue is one word plus one number — "fruit 3". The word states the connection between cards, the number says how many cards it covers.

The bans are narrow and precise. You cannot use any word visible on the grid as your clue, and the root counts too: with SEA on the table, "sailor" is not allowed.

The one-word rule is strict as well. Compound words and abbreviations vary by table, and it's the single detail worth agreeing before the first clue.

A team gets the number in the clue plus one guess. "Fruit 3" allows four guesses, the extra one existing so teams can pick up cards left over from earlier turns.

Guessing continues as long as the cards turn up correct. Touch a wrong card and the turn passes to the other team immediately.

A team can stop early, and often should. Stopping on an uncertain card is cheaper than guessing: a wrong guess doesn't only end the turn, it can hand the other side one of their cards.

One of the 25 cards is the assassin. Touch it and your team loses on the spot, whatever the score was.

The assassin is what balances the game's risk. Without it, every clue would carry a huge number; because of it, a spymaster has to weigh how many cards a clue covers against how badly it might be misread.

The most common spymaster mistake is forgetting the assassin exists. A broad clue like "object 4" very often reaches it.

A good clue isn't the one covering the most cards, it's the one that can't be misread. A weak clue joining three cards usually plays worse than a certain clue joining two.

Shared knowledge matters just as much. A reference to a show or a song works in a group who all know it and dies instantly in a mixed one.

Codenames works below four players. In the two-player version there are no opposing teams: you take turns giving clues and try to clear the whole grid together.

That version caps the number of turns, and the assassin still ends the game outright. Because you're chasing a shared score rather than beating anyone, it works well for couples and small groups.

What makes Codenames good is that the whole table thinks at once and every guess gets argued out loud. That kind of shared floor doesn't need a box: a question deck on a phone also moves round the table and needs no setup.

They aren't the same game — one runs on association and deduction, the other on conversation. But after a couple of rounds the table wants to change gear, and questions land well there. Best Liar Wins suits people who like bluffing; The Gossip Pot is built for rounds where a group talks about each other.