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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?

#31

Post by pimanrules »

satyrnein wrote: post #27
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

There's also an official app that has some nice features:

- You can generate grids on multiple devices with a seed

- If the phone displaying the grid falls over, it automatically hides the grid.

I don't know if the grids in the app are truly random or if they follow some constraints though.

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

#32

Post by Arnavion »

For anyone else like me who's only played the online versions and was really confused by the article: the physical game does not completely randomize the positions of red and blue cards but has a fixed set of possible configurations - the "configuration cards" that the article is talking about.

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

#33

Post by drodio »

DROdio here, CEO of Storytell.ai

Thanks for trying Storytell for coding work, Dan!

When you say it "I don't think it took too much longer to get working code than it would've taken if I just coded up the entire thing by hand with no assistance. I'm going to guess that it took about twice as long, but for all I know it was a comparable amount of time." → I'm actually amazed that it performed as well as it did for native code generation.

We put code generation in the "Use with Caution" bucket as I describe in https://web.storytell.ai/blog/the-intersection-of-ai-curious...

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

#34

Post by creer »

Codenames is a word guessing game - in part. It's also a game of ingenuity, of knowing your players / spymasters, of players trying to be better as a group than as individuals, of paying attention (and using the other team's clues) - and at some point it's a game and can be played seriously and competitively.

From that point of view I don't see a serious problem with embracing the game pieces provided and taking them into consideration. It is a dimension in the game. It does not kill the game. Solid thinking from that team.

I have more of a problem with people learning word lists for Scrabble. It's not against the rules - but it makes it hard to play with these people. It's a significant class difference.

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

#35

Post by TheDong »

jader201 wrote: post #29
TheDong wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

By "guessing" I meant "the guessing phase" as opposed to "the clueing phase", i.e. it's about the phase where you pick cards.

I should have said "picking phase", but from my example, you should have been able to see that I knew it was about memorizing the boards.

I feel like you've taken an intentionally negative reading of my comment, which I suppose fair's fair because I wasn't exactly being charitable to my parent comment either.

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

#36

Post by quuxplusone »

ralferoo wrote: post #11

Adding to the list of related games at the end of the article, I recently played "Poetry for Neanderthals" and thought it was quite fun, although really once you've figured out how to trick your brain into thinking with grunts, it becomes easy quite quickly because then you tap into the primal part of your brain that prefers single syllables. But bashing people with the rubber hammer kept it amusing for longer than i…

I played "Poetry for Neaderthals" once a few months ago, and concluded that its enjoyability must really depend on the group. My wife and I were playing at a meetup with a couple of party-game guys who maybe weren't the brightest bulbs in the box (they were the ones who brought the game, but they'd never played it before either). This made it no trouble at all when either of us was the "master," but excruciatingly painful when either of them was.

Like, suppose the word is WINDOW. They'd be like, "Um... house. [long pause] Grass, sky. Glass! Um... [long pause] see? Eye look at?" And I'd be like, "This is a thing in the wall of a house. You can see through it. It's made out of glass. Um... it has panes, and a sill. It might have drapes next to it. You go to it when you want to see out of the house, but it's not the door. A thief might come in through it," etc. etc.

Once you realize you can just say whatever you like (as long as it's in words of one syllable), it seems like the whole game is "cooked." Even with a group of uniformly competent players, I feel like it would just devolve into listening very carefully to a rapid-fire stream of words to try to detect any slips — i.e. real-time proofreading — which to me doesn't count as an enjoyable way to spend a game night.

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

#37

Post by default-kramer »

creer wrote: post #34

Codenames is a word guessing game - in part. It's also a game of ingenuity, of knowing your players / spymasters, of players trying to be better as a group than as individuals, of paying attention (and using the other team's clues) - and at some point it's a game and can be played seriously and competitively. From that point of view I don't see a serious problem with embracing the game pieces provided and taking them…

I gotta disagree, I'm way more accepting of Scrabble list memorizers (even though I'll never be one) because word knowledge was intended by the game designers to be a part of the game.

Memorizing the spymaster layouts was almost certainly not intended by the designers of Codenames. Probably someone realized it was possible, but as other commenters mention the increased friction of fully randomized layouts isn't worth it when almost no one will want to do this.

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

#38

Post by renewiltord »

Izkata wrote: post #14
TheDong wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> " 0" We had a game once where one team was starting to look at that card because of previous hints and the spymaster did exactly that to say "don't do it", but because the hint was for that card they ignored the number and picked it that round.

The fun of this game is in the absolute clowning that happens. This is fantastic haha.

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

#39

Post by default-kramer »

TheDong wrote: post #24
pimlottc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But saying zero disallows your team from guessing at all, right? Maybe " 666" would work.

A common pattern in our play groups is when the other team is just 1 away from winning and you cannot find a clue that covers all your remaining words, you come up with the best clue you can and say "99" so that it's clear "The number is irrelevant to the clue here, just keep guessing until you win or you miss."

Edit: I'm wrong. From the rules: "If 0 is the number, the usual limit on guesses does not apply. Field operatives can guess as many words as they want. They still must guess at least one word."

Edit2: And instead of 99, my play groups should have been using "unlimited." Again from the rules: "Sometimes you may have multiple unguessed words related to clues from the previous rounds. If you want your team to guess more than one of them, you may say unlimited instead of a number. For example feathers: unlimited."

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

#40

Post by TheDong »

default-kramer wrote: post #39
TheDong wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But saying zero disallows your team from guessing at all, right? Maybe " 666" would work. A common pattern in our play groups is when the other team is just 1 away from winning and you cannot find a clue that covers all your remaining words, you come up with the best clue you can and say "99" so that it's clear "The number is irrelevant to the clue here, just keep guessing until you win or you miss." Edit: I'm wrong.…

The rules specifically say that a number of zero means any number of guesses is permitted. They also say 'unlimited' is permitted instead of a number
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