This is exactly why i like this game. Upon first playing it, the attacks were obvious to beat anyone who was playing legitimately. Assuming both teams know this fact, means the choice is, play the game to win and it is boring or play the game to have fun and challenge yourself and partner. During every occasion, the latter has prevailed.
How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?
41–50 of 55 posts
Re: How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?
#42Codenames 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…
Memorizing the layouts altogether would be a step too far. And probably some people could do it...
I was thinking more of remembering that the layouts have basic characteristics: a team's words are not bunched on one side, or all lined up, or in a circle, etc. Not your team's, not the other team's.
But now that you mention it, fully randomized would be easy to do as a phone app. And a phone could be propped up in front of the spymasters. (The setup with the layout propped in front of the spymasters works really well in a party setting, where it's normal that some people will get up and walk around without wanting to cheat.)
Re: How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?
#43Earlier 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.
If I was the spymaster in that story I’d just chuckle about how these games go, excuse myself to the bathroom, and scream into a towel.
Re: How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?
#44This is exactly why i like this game. Upon first playing it, the attacks were obvious to beat anyone who was playing legitimately. Assuming both teams know this fact, means the choice is, play the game to win and it is boring or play the game to have fun and challenge yourself and partner. During every occasion, the latter has prevailed.
This could actually make a good interview problem for the ability to focus on the stated goal and to play well with others. Use Codenames or create a game with many exploits that will jump out to smart people. Be explicit the point of the exercise is for everyone to have fun and play in the spirit of the game. Do they do that, or does their desire to be right and “figure it out” trample the real goal?
Good test for an IC that wants to jump to a manager, cross-team or especially sales role. Believe me, you don’t close deals by dunking on your prospects.
Re: How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Memorizing the layouts altogether would be a step too far. And probably some people could do it... I was thinking more of remembering that the layouts have basic characteristics: a team's words are not bunched on one side, or all lined up, or in a circle, etc. Not your team's, not the other team's. But now that you mention it, fully randomized would be easy to do as a phone app. And a phone could be propped up in fro…
Or a boggle-esque set of dice rather than a phone app.
Re: How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?
#46This is an interesting view of how random number based security is compromised for economic practicalities (though the meanings of "security" and "compromised" might be overstretched here). For completeness, I wondered how many cards would be required to give the complete set of patterns. If we number the positions in the 5x5 grid such that the top row has positions 1-5, the second row has 6-10 and so on, the grid po…
> To account for rotations, we can divide the final value by 4 since every arrangement can be rotated and is therefore valid. Note that this is only approximately correct, since some layouts will have nontrivial symmetries. (Edit: Actually no they won't due to parity reasons! Oops. So that step is exact after all.) Edit: Actually, this isn't correct either, and in a more serious way: > Of the 25 cards, there are 7 wh…
> Actually no they won't due to parity reasons!
Can you elaborate? I think I can construct some boards that effectively have complete rotational symmetry.
For the purposes of the game, black can be thought of as another white card (since you will never reveal it in the middle of a round), and the double agent can be placed in the center. Then, you just need to place the remaining categories with rotational symmetry (e.g. red on the two main diagonals, and blue on the squares directly clockwise from those). So, for instance:
RBwwR
wRBRB
wBdBw
BRBRw
RwwBR
Re: How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?
#47I'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…
Note that in the described game the spymaster didn't give out a clue like this; the article states "From the given clue, we were unable to [guess all of our remaining words]". I guess it was a teammate that suggested the other strategy.
Re: How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Memorizing the layouts altogether would be a step too far. And probably some people could do it... I was thinking more of remembering that the layouts have basic characteristics: a team's words are not bunched on one side, or all lined up, or in a circle, etc. Not your team's, not the other team's. But now that you mention it, fully randomized would be easy to do as a phone app. And a phone could be propped up in fro…
Or not even any programming and showing one of the online Codenames on the phone - just for the map.
Re: How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?
#49Codenames 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…
> word knowledge was intended by the game designers to be a part of the game
This is the most frustrating part of Scrabble to me. I consider my vocabulary to be pretty good. But frequently when I try to use an even slightly-esoteric word in scrabble, it turns out to not be in the official dictionary. And conversely, the official dictionary is full of words I've never heard or seen used by real people and often has some definition like "18th century slang for ". I then lose to people who know all these weird words (especially the very short ones, which they've memorized) and who admit they have never heard these words outside a scrabble context either.
In short, the English the players speak and the English defined by the official dictionary are different enough languages that it seems only useful as a way to learn "Scrabble English" and not modern English.
Re: How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?
#50I'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…
The rule for "unlimited" actually does cover it:
"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."
You can't use "unlimited" as you're proposing - it's allowed only if there are multiple unguessed words from previous clues.
That said, the "0" approach isn't banned by the rules and would work the same way.