Game Information
- Objective: For one team to identify all of their assigned “agent” words from a 5×5 grid before the other team does.
- Players: Typically played with at least 4 players (two teams of two or more). Variants exist for 2 or 3 players.
- Roles: Each team has one spymaster (clue-giver) and one or more field operatives (guessers).
- Components: The game uses a grid of 25 “codenames” (words), a key card (visible only to spymasters), and various agent, bystander, and an assassin card to cover the words as they are guessed.
- The Assassin: One black square on the key card corresponds to the assassin word. If any team guesses this word, that team instantly loses the game.
Core Rules
- Setup: 25 word cards are laid out in a 5×5 grid. Spymasters view a hidden key card that shows which words are their team’s agents (9 for the starting team, 8 for the other), which are innocent bystanders (7), and which is the assassin (1).
- Giving a Clue: On your team’s turn, the spymaster gives a single-word clue and a number (e.g., “Animal, 3”).
- The clue must relate to the meaning of the word(s) on the board, not their position, spelling, or a part of the word (e.g., “horse” is not a valid clue for “horseshoe”).
- The number indicates how many words on the grid relate to the clue.
- Spymasters must not give any other hints, use facial expressions, or touch the cards during the guessing phase.
- Guessing: The field operatives discuss the clue and guess one word at a time by touching it.
- If they guess their own team’s agent, they place an agent card on the word and can guess again.
- If they guess a bystander or the opposing team’s agent, their turn ends immediately. The opposing team places their agent card if it’s their word.
- They can make up to the number of guesses given by the spymaster plus one (e.g., for “Animal, 3”, they get up to 4 guesses).
- Operatives can choose to stop guessing at any time, which ends their turn.
- They must make at least one guess per turn.
- Winning: The first team to cover all of their agent words wins the game. If at any point a team guesses the assassin, they lose immediately.
