• Reviews around clue (3.47 of 5)

    Codenames

    • A 5x5 grid of word cards is laid out and then using a key card that shows what words are for each team and which ones are bystanders or an assassin, the clue givers take turns saying a clue word and a number which indicates how many of their team words are related to the clue
    • Example, if 3 of your words are Sun, Jalapeno, and Fire, the Spy Master could give a clue of "Hot, 3" meaning that 3 of the words out there correspond with the clue "Hot
    • Will an abstract clue such as "CAT" lead you to guess the words "PYRAMID" and "FISH" or should you play it safe and use more literal clues such as "woof" for "dog"
    • but if you can give great one word clues then no problem.
    • Pro tip: Don't try to create taxonomically accurate clues
    • You need to be careful because if you give a clue and your team guesses the opponents teams word the opponents get a point and you lose your turn, or worse yet, if your team guesses the assassin word, you LOSE
    • It's so simple to play, but also challenging trying to come up with the right clues for your teammates
    • Always fun to be the ones guessing; more challenging to be the ones giving the clues
    • Basically you just try to give your team member(s) the best clues to guess your team's words.
    • The components are high-quality and very readable, and the nature of the game is such that replayability is essentially infinite - because the important skill is giving clues that hint at multiple answers on the randomly-determined board, it doesn't get overly familiar the way some other word-guessing games can.
    • In this game you have a code master giving clues to his team trying to have them guess specific words on the grid without having them guess other words
    • It's especially tough at first!I don't think it would be good for young ones because bad clues make it impossible for everyone else to guess.
    • No way to describe the fear and thrill of being the codemaster when your teammates are depending on you to come up with a great clue
    • and I had to give my husband bad clues to stop him from guessing all the spies in one turn so my son could have a chance
    • Really difficult if you don't give a good clue
    • but it's fun to have to think hard and come up with creative clues
    • our first play was an absolute dud because we thought that one team could keep having its turn and giving clues until it missed... a common mistake, apparently, according to feedback on boardgamegeek.
    • I think this could easily be adapted to play with younger kids (reading age) by limiting the field of cards to less than the suggested 25 and limiting clues to one card at a time.
    • The game is so well crafted that just when you think you have the perfect clue to win the game for your team you realize that you might have just lost it.
    • It occupied us for hours as we tried to hone our clue-giving skills
    • All you have to do is provide one good clue for one code name and your turn continues
    • It may ruin your game if someone gives an illegal clue, so I like to lay the ground rules
    • There was some really weird clues given, but that just made it funnier
    • The rules are very simple, but due to the nature of the game there's plenty of opportunity to challenge yourself intellectually and feel clever for coming up with strong clues
    • Only the spymasters know what is what, and It is up to them to give clever clues which link their teams words
    • Or you play it safe and you give very specific clues and limit your team to 1-2 guesses at a time
    • Getting the clues right is half the fun, the other half is seeing the clues guessed wrong when you know what they were thinking
    • My all-time best clue being a six card clue (resulting in 4 picks at first)
    • the political affiliation and various other characteristics of the clue-giver (how much the clue-giver knows about "street" associations of certain words)(5) whether or not the clue given would have too hard a clue for the combination of words being guessed (i.e., "would I have given that clue?")(6) whether puns are intentional#4,6 gives it a nice "party game" / taboo / family game feel, since you're making deductions based on a person's personality
    • As an example, a clue of "animal" might be great if you're trying to get your team to guess "cat" and "dog", but horrible if the opposing team also controls the "lion" card
    • This was the clue my 10 year old niece gave.....so smart!
    • The challenge is to always come up with the most concise clue to cover the most "own-team" cards without accidentally giving away a card to the opposing team.
    • The mechanic of trying to find the right clue to get your team to guess as many correct answers as possible while avoiding wrong answers is unique, and a great angle to the game
    • Wasn't sure if this would be too difficult for my 10-year-old, but I was surprised by how quickly he was able to get the hang of it and come up with some great clues
    • Instead, it felt to me like a lot of people sat and waited around while each of the spymasters tried to come up with good clues, then argued more than was necessary about which cards to guess
    • This is a different game that requires thought and thinking in different ways to give good clues
    • A typical pattern is the spymaster agonizes over coming up with a clever clue, runs out of time or patience, then just gives a basic, safe clue
    • Giving great clues to your team while trying to avoid the assassin is a lot of fun
    • The word indicates which of the (code)words the players should pick, and the number indicates how many codewords match that particular clue.
    • Adding an incentive to go for two or more at a time encourages more inventive clues -- and rewards remembering past guesses.
    • It's not really that bad, as you can get around it with clever clues, and can lead to some pretty hilarious moments when you desperately try to associate two words together.
    • We laughed at each other and how dumb we were because we couldn’t come up with good clues
    • You will never repeat the exact game because its dependent not just on the cards you lay down, but the combination card you pick, the code master's clues which they have to develop themselves and finally how the teams interpret those clues
    • It's a blast to be the person that gives the clues and exciting to see what words you will get each time
    • This allows the other team to go and encourages spymasters to go big or go home instead of giving easy 1-word clues
    • Its essentially puts two teams of people head to head to see who can give the best clues to get their teem to select a group of words
    • Once you have that you go around looking for the best one-word clue you can give to give your team the chance to guess the most words on your list.
    • Sometimes the clue gets stuck in their head like a worm and they can't let it go
    • On top of all that, for the price of sub $20, you'll get your money's worth out of it in time and memories of ridiculous clues that either worked or didn't work!
    • For example if the spymaster cheers when a team picks 3 of 3 cards correctly, they're letting them know that those were the 3 cards he was thinking of, so they can safely disregard the clue that led them there
    • We love code names because we can play it with the two of us or a huge group and have a lot of fun either way l!