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How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?

danluu.com

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Re: How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?

#21

Post by pimlottc »

anonymoushn wrote: post #12
stavros wrote: post #10

I'd like to note that giving clues that are not about the words themselves is against the rules (and clues about position are explicitly called out in the rules as illegal). The methods in the post are interesting, but technically against the rules of the game. EDIT: Though I didn't figure out whether he means "clues about the position" or "clues about the words, until you can open enough cards to narrow down to one…

If you've memorized all the layouts, you don't need any kind of clue, so you don't need a kind of clue that's banned. You could for example clue "Sausage" every time and your team would play as well as the bot in the article. To play better than the bot, you might want to clue about words for 1 turn or so.

I would say that’s still against the rules since “sausage” has no relevance to the meaning of the target words. Obviously you could just bullshit some extremely tentative relationship if pressed but it goes against the spirit of the rules.

Re: How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?

#22

Post by anonymoushn »

hangsi wrote: post #20
anonymoushn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've memorized all the layouts, you don't need any kind of clue, so you don't need a kind of clue that's banned. You could for example clue "Sausage" every time and your team would play as well as the bot in the article. To play better than the bot, you might want to clue about words for 1 turn or so.

Clues must be related to the semantic meaning of the cards, so irrelevant clues are technically banned. So, a "sausage" strategy would be illegal on many boards.

I guess you'd have to call an unrelated word and zero, which is explicitly allowed.

Re: How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?

#23

Post by [deleted] »

pimlottc wrote: post #21
anonymoushn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've memorized all the layouts, you don't need any kind of clue, so you don't need a kind of clue that's banned. You could for example clue "Sausage" every time and your team would play as well as the bot in the article. To play better than the bot, you might want to clue about words for 1 turn or so.

I would say that’s still against the rules since “sausage” has no relevance to the meaning of the target words. Obviously you could just bullshit some extremely tentative relationship if pressed but it goes against the spirit of the rules.

[deleted]

Re: How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?

#24

Post by TheDong »

pimlottc wrote: post #21
anonymoushn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've memorized all the layouts, you don't need any kind of clue, so you don't need a kind of clue that's banned. You could for example clue "Sausage" every time and your team would play as well as the bot in the article. To play better than the bot, you might want to clue about words for 1 turn or so.

I would say that’s still against the rules since “sausage” has no relevance to the meaning of the target words. Obviously you could just bullshit some extremely tentative relationship if pressed but it goes against the spirit of the rules.

I feel like saying " 0" every time is 100% in the spirit of the clue-ing rules, and there's no rules related to guessing, so this guessing strategy also doesn't seem to violate things that overtly.

I do agree that there's an implicit intention in the rules that the operative's guesses are related to the spymaster's hints, but I don't think that relation is ever said explicitly.

Re: How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?

#25

Post by abound »

mkaszkowiak wrote: post #7

I've also thought about creating a Codenames bot: what if we could use semantic similarity to batch words together? Surely, this can be done using a prebuilt embedding model and clustering! After some failed experiments - it performed worse than I thought it will - I've googled the subject, and... it turns out there's a whole paper about ML and codenames :) https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.05885 ( Playing Codenames with La…

I'd also attempted something like this years ago [1] based on word2vec, and it played decently! Occasionally it would throw out nonsensical clues or guesses, but was usable.

I'm sure with more modern embeddings/tools one could make a really excellent not.

[1] https://github.com/bcspragu/Codenames

Re: How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?

#26

Post by cauch »

TheDong wrote: post #17
cauch wrote: post #15

I don't know the game that much, but ways to create random 5x5 grid seems pretty simple when I quickly try to think about one. What about having 25 scrabble-like squares in a bag, and the spymasters pick randomly in the bag. Each square has a number from 1 to 25 that correspond to one position on the 5x5 grid, and one extra square is chosen to be the black square and shown to the spymasters. The spymasters have a pen…

That adds pretty noticeable friction over the pre-printed cards, so I think the pre-printed cards make a lot of sense to have. Note that the game already comes with 25 colored tiles (red / blue / white) which are used to cover the game board, so what you describe could be easily done with the existing game by putting those 25 tiles in a bag, shaking it, and having the spymasters secretly draw all 25 and fill in a gri…

You are right, it is more cumbersome, but it is worth doing it if people have played a lot and they start to unconsciously remember the "weird pattern", which is basically ruining the game. I would say the printed card can be used when that risk is low.

Re: How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?

#27

Post by satyrnein »

NeoTar wrote: post #5

I think the total number of code-names grids possible is something like 210 344 706 000, so the 40 cards (plus 4 rotations, so 160 possible grids) are only a tiny, tiny fragment of those possible. But it does mean that defeating the bot would only mean creating a custom grid, which sounds very practical virtually, and possible (but harder) in person.

I did a quick search, and there are generators that I guess you bring up on your phone, like so:

https://code-names.netlify.app

Re: How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?

#28

Post by quuxplusone »

Excellent article, with multiple directions of rabbit holes to descend. I liked the linked essay on "The Bitter Lesson": http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html

I liked the Mastodon thread linked from the appendix, re Dave Sirlin's theory of "scrubs" (who'd eschew the post's geometric tactic) versus "good players": https://mastodon.social/@danluu/110544419353766175

Which in turn links to the original imgur post describing the Warhammer 40K match between Wheels and Shooter: https://imgur.com/a/V0gND

+1 to nemetroid's recommendation of "So Clover," which is indeed more of a pastime than a game, but it's still great and belongs on any list of great word games.

I also like "Contact," which is playable without any props: https://quuxplusone.github.io/blog/2021/11/12/contact/

Re: How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?

#29

Post by jader201 »

TheDong wrote: post #13
stavros wrote: post #10

I'd like to note that giving clues that are not about the words themselves is against the rules (and clues about position are explicitly called out in the rules as illegal). The methods in the post are interesting, but technically against the rules of the game. EDIT: Though I didn't figure out whether he means "clues about the position" or "clues about the words, until you can open enough cards to narrow down to one…

You clearly don't understand the article since it's not about clues at all, but entirely about guessing. Basically, the claim is that based entirely on the pattern of the board (revealed red, blue, and white cards), there are so few legal board configurations (the cards that the spymasters are using), that the field operatives can ignore the hint the spymaster gave, and guess correct cards anyway based on the board's…

> You clearly don't understand the article since it's not about clues at all, but entirely about guessing.

Not entirely about guessing. In fact, guessing isn’t involved at all, at least not after the first turn.

You left out that to do this, you need to have memorized basically all of the spymaster cards, or enough of them to increase the odds of you figuring out the configuration.

This is basically the same as the cheat in the memory match game in Super Mario Bros. 3 where you uncover matching power ups [1], and receive the power ups that you successfully uncover — but there are only 8 possible boards, so it’s way easier vs. this Codenames cheat.

Even if this is not technically considered cheating, it definitely would feel like cheating, since again you need to have knowledge of most of the spymaster cards. (And it goes without saying, this is definitely against the spirit of the game, even if it’s a neat party trick.)

[1] https://mario.fandom.com/wiki/Matching_Game

Re: How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?

#30

Post by Skeime »

TheDong wrote: post #17
cauch wrote: post #15

I don't know the game that much, but ways to create random 5x5 grid seems pretty simple when I quickly try to think about one. What about having 25 scrabble-like squares in a bag, and the spymasters pick randomly in the bag. Each square has a number from 1 to 25 that correspond to one position on the 5x5 grid, and one extra square is chosen to be the black square and shown to the spymasters. The spymasters have a pen…

That adds pretty noticeable friction over the pre-printed cards, so I think the pre-printed cards make a lot of sense to have. Note that the game already comes with 25 colored tiles (red / blue / white) which are used to cover the game board, so what you describe could be easily done with the existing game by putting those 25 tiles in a bag, shaking it, and having the spymasters secretly draw all 25 and fill in a gri…

The way I would do it: Get a board with a grid of 5x5 insets (like a Big Boggle board), a screen to hide it, 25 colored marbles (9 blue, 8 red, 1 black, 7 white), and a bag. Shake the marbles in the bag and empty it onto the board, shuffling it around until each marble is in a hole.

(Add another red marble if you want to alternate the starting team without switching their color and remove a red or blue marble each time.)

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