How to Play Codenames

The Short Version

Codenames is a team word game. Twenty-five word cards lie in a 5×5 grid, and each one secretly belongs to the red team, the blue team, innocent bystanders, or — in one case — an assassin. Each team’s spymaster can see the secret key and gives one-word clues to guide their operatives to their team’s words. Guess right and you keep going; guess wrong and your turn ends; touch the assassin and you lose instantly. The first team to find all of its agents wins.

What You Need

The Codenames box: a deck of codename (word) cards, key cards, and cover tiles — agent tiles in both team colours, bystander tiles, and the black assassin tile. You need at least four players: two teams, each with one spymaster and at least one operative (the guessing side scales happily to a crowd). The original game is rated 14+, mostly for vocabulary; families with younger players should look at Codenames: Pictures (rated 10+), which plays identically with pictures instead of words.

Set Up

Shuffle the word cards and lay 25 of them face up in a 5×5 grid where everyone can read them. The two spymasters sit side by side on one side of the table, facing their operatives. Draw a key card at random and stand it in front of the spymasters so only they can see it — never show the operatives, and guard against reflections and over-the-shoulder reads.

The key mirrors the grid and shows which words belong to whom: 9 words for the team that goes first, 8 for the other team, 7 innocent bystanders, and 1 assassin. The coloured lights around the edge of the key card tell you which team starts (and therefore which team has the 9 words). Give each team its agent tiles; the bystander tiles and the assassin tile sit within the spymasters’ reach.

How to Play

Teams take turns. On your team’s turn, the spymaster studies the key and gives a clue made of exactly one word and one number. The number says how many of your team’s words the clue points to: ‘Ocean: 3’ means three of your agents’ words connect to ‘ocean’ somehow. The clue may never contain any form of a word still showing on the grid.

Then the operatives go to work. They may talk openly among themselves — everyone hears the discussion, including the other team — but the spymaster must stay silent and poker-faced. To make an official guess, an operative touches one card. The spymaster covers it with the tile it actually is:

• Your team’s agent: correct. Keep guessing, if guesses remain.
• An innocent bystander: your turn ends immediately.
• The other team’s agent: it gets covered for them — you’ve done their work — and your turn ends immediately.
• The assassin: the game ends on the spot and your team loses.

Your team may make up to the clue’s number plus one guesses (the extra guess lets you revisit a word from an earlier clue). After making at least one guess, operatives may stop and pass voluntarily at any point — there’s no obligation to spend every guess, and stopping before you talk yourself into the assassin is often the smart play. When the turn ends, the other team’s spymaster gives their clue.

Scoring

There is no point score to track — Codenames is a race, not an accumulation game. Your progress is visible on the table: every agent tile your team has placed is one word found. The starting team must find 9 agents; the other team needs 8, which is the whole compensation for going second. If you want a running score across an evening, count games won — or, for a sharper contest, note how many turns the winning team needed, and try to beat it in the rematch.

Winning

Your team wins the moment all of its agents on the grid are covered. There are exactly two ways the game ends early: a team touches the assassin, and that team loses immediately, no matter how far ahead it was; or a team accidentally covers the other team’s final agent with a guess, handing them the win. Every other finish is the straightforward race — most words found, first, wins.

Variations Worth Knowing

Codenames: Duet rebuilds the game as a two-player (or two-team) cooperative mission: both sides give clues, the key is double-sided, and you win together by finding all the agents within a shared turn limit, with bystanders acting as a countdown. It’s the version to own if you mostly play as a couple.

Codenames: Pictures swaps the words for a 5×4 grid of quirky pictures and is rated 10+, making it the family default. Clue rules, the assassin, and the number-plus-one guessing all work exactly as above.

Two or three players, original game: the official small-table fix is one spymaster playing against a simulated team, or two players splitting spymaster and operative duties cooperatively against the key — agree your win condition (find all of one colour before a set number of bystanders, for instance) before you deal the grid.