Codenames House Rules and Variations Worth Trying

Every group that plays the one-word-clue game for more than a month invents house rules. Some fix a real problem. Some are a solution to something that was never broken. Here is what regular groups actually keep, and why.

The ones worth adopting

• A clue timer. One minute, then you must speak. The single best variation there is: it stops the spymaster who takes four minutes searching for the perfect clue while five people watch a grid in silence. Fluency beats brilliance and the game gets roughly twice as long per hour.
• No proper nouns. Banning names of people, places and brands stops rounds being decided by who happens to know a footballer. Especially worth it in a mixed group, or one where people grew up in different countries.
• Spymaster may pass. Sometimes a board genuinely has no safe clue. Allowing a pass costs the turn and removes the worst outcome in the game, which is a spymaster forced into a clue they know is near the assassin.
• Rotate the spymaster every round. Not really a rule change so much as the fix for the group where one person is always spymaster. The role is the hardest and most fun part; hoarding it is how the other four get bored.

The ones that sound better than they play

• Two-word clues. Tempting, and it removes the constraint that makes the game a game. With two words you can nearly always point at exactly the right squares, and the guessing team stops having anything to discuss.
• Unlimited guesses. Removes all risk management. The number in the clue is the whole tension.
• Sudden death on any wrong guess. Punishing, and it makes people tap nothing. The existing rules already punish a wrong guess by ending the turn.
• Showing the spymaster’s reasoning as you go. Fun once as a teaching tool, fatal to a real game.

Variants that change the game usefully

Cooperative mode. Both players are spymasters against the board, with a shared turn limit. This is the two-player version and the best way to play with one other person — see playing with two people.

Learner mode. Pre-teach the board, allow two-word clues, and require the spymaster to explain the clue afterwards. Turns the game into speaking practice; there is a full version of this in Codenames for ESL classes.

Silent guessers. One round where the team may not discuss. Worth doing exactly once, so everybody appreciates how much of the game is the argument.

Before you add a rule

Ask which problem it solves. Most house rules are really a complaint about one player — the slow spymaster, the trivia specialist, the one who taps before anyone finishes talking — and a rule aimed at a person tends to make the game worse for everyone else. The timer and the proper-noun ban survive because they fix the game rather than a person.

Word Spies and five other word games are free on TalkSibi, playable from everyone’s own phone with a room code. More: how to win, spymaster clue strategies.