Codenames is a game in which two teams compete to guess which words in a random 5×5 grid of cards are “theirs.” The catch is that only one player on each team—the “spymaster”—knows which words belong to whom. The spymasters take turns giving single-word clues to the rest of their teams that hint towards as many of their own words as possible, while taking care to prevent their team from picking the enemy team’s words.
For me, the most noticeable problem with Codenames is pacing. Typically, spymasters have no time limit on coming up with a hint word. This tends to make the game move very slowly, as it’s easy for a spymaster to get stuck in a position where they are unable to think of a satisfying hint. While social pressure can be an effective motivator to yield a substandard hint, it often just makes players flustered and unable to concentrate. The game comes with a small hourglass that the manual suggests can—according to house rules—be used as a time limit. This solves the pacing problem, but only increases the stress and anxiety. When playing spymaster, one very rarely actually feels like a master spy. If anything, Codenames evokes the feeling of reaching the front of a long line at a restaurant and not knowing what to order, while hungry customers stand impatiently behind you. It is not a pleasant feeling.
Though the guessing phase also has no strict time limit, it’s less problematic as all players have something to do. The spymasters get to keep thinking about hints, the guessing players get to guess, and the opposing team gets to watch with tense anticipation while also trying to solve the puzzle themselves to better understand the board.
The guessing phase much better fits the party-game essence of Codenames, as guessing is generally enjoyable in all scenarios and to all players. Correctly interpreting a hint is a satisfying reassurance of intellect and communication abilities for the spymaster and guessers. Being unsure of a hint is a tense gamble, and gambling is a time-tested mechanic. Even confidently incorrectly guessing a hint is often a humorous moment for both the spymaster (“why would you guess that??”) and the guesser (“why would you pick that hint??).” In my experience, the best moments in Codenames have not been winning, but laughing in disbelief at comically inscrutable hints/guesses that follow utterly bewildering mental gymnastics. When the stakes are low, critical failures are fun.
Codenames is not a particularly competitive game, so balance is not a big issue. Nonetheless, it stands that any given round of odenames is inherently unbalanced, as the sets of cards belonging to each team are random. More often than not, one team’s words are much easier to clue. In a game designed to be symmetrical, this imbalance simply feels unfair to play with. The law of large numbers means that the game is balanced over the course of many rounds, but in my experience, Codenames is seldom played for more than 3 rounds in a sitting due to its slow pacing and generally mentally-taxing nature.
Though it has its problems, Codenames is nonetheless a fun and unique experience, and a good game for parties. Its guessing mechanics also helps the game scale up to arbitrary numbers of players, as discussing with other players is equally or more engaging than trying to decipher the spymaster’s clues alone. As an added bonus, the rulebook for Codenames is impressively thorough, accounting for all the different types of questionable hints or loopholes that spymasters might come up with, and being accommodating for different playstyles.
