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OpenAI's o1 Playing Codenames

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71–80 of 138 posts

Re: OpenAI's o1 Playing Codenames

#71
post #44

I don’t find this “super good”. It’s mostly giving 2 clues which is the most basic level of competence. The paper 4 clue is reasonable but a bit lucky (eg Jack is also a good guess). I also don’t see it actually using tactics properly, which I would consider part of being “super good”. The game isn’t just about picking a good clue each round! Now obviously it’s still pretty decent at finding the clues. Probably bette…

Can you elaborate on some of the more advanced tactics? When I play, it's mostly about getting a good 2 clue each time. Then if you can opportunistically get a 3 or 4, that's awesome. Some tactics come in for choosing the right pairs of 2's so you don't end up mismatched, or leaving clues that might be ambiguous with your opponent's... But that's mostly it. It'll be fun for multiplayer! Just like how in other online…

I find the game more about reading the people on your team (and the other team) to understand how they think.

You have to give entirely different clues depending on the people you play with.

Sometimes you can also play adversarial and introduce doubt into the opposing team by giving topic-adjacent clues that cause them to avoid one of their own cards. It works better if someone on the other team tends to be a big doubter. It also can work when the other team constantly goes back and tries to pick n+1 cards that they think they missed from the last round, which gives you a lot of room to psychologically mess with them.

Sometimes you have a clue that only really matches 2, but because only 1 of the wrong matches is a neutral card and you could match 2 more by a massive stretch, you say “4.” Worse case, they get 2 right but then they pick the neutral card but in the best case, you stand to gain 4 for a clue that should only match 2.

I like Codenames because they are many meta ways to play the game. What makes Codenames unique is that, unlike a lot of other games (Catan, Secret Hitler, CAH, etc.), it’s an adversarial team game where the team dynamics and discussions are not secret so you can use them to your advantage.

Re: OpenAI's o1 Playing Codenames

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other advanced tactics involve giving a broad clue that matches 3-4 of your own and just one other (either your opponents or a civilian). Your team can pick up all the matches across several turns and the one off doesn't hurt as much as the plus four helps

The S-tier tactic: When that high-number clue is cut short by a turn-ending mistake, the guessers tell their clue giver to inflate the number given during the totally unrelated next clue by however many remained from the truncated turn for which they don't need additional information to locate (and therefore it would be wasteful for a future clue to re-group those) so the stated number of that next clue must allow fo…

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Re: OpenAI's o1 Playing Codenames

#74
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this sort of communication from guessers to clue giver is in the spirit of the game (at least in my play group). However, inflating later clues is a reasonable approach! It's just that I don't think you're allowed to communicate the amount of inflation. Guessers must determine whether people 5 has slack to allow additional guesses on previous clues.

You're free to add additional prohibitions on communication as a house rule I guess, but the only prohibition in the rule book I've seen is that the clue giver's speech must consist exclusively of clues (and private consultation with the other clue giver). The clue giver is free to adjust their clue in reaction to anything they hear, and guessers can speak freely. Important: the clue giver cannot acknowledge the inst…

If you take this idea of communication restrictions to the limit, you could imagine the guessers identifying N sets of cards by a single word each as they discuss their guess. The clue giver listens, then uses the clue that identifies the correct set of N cards.

You really just need an algorithm to generate unique sets of 8 or 9 from the whole board, and identifies those sets by a word.

Re: OpenAI's o1 Playing Codenames

#75
Some of these clues wouldn't be very good for a human playing. "007" for example isn't a very good clue for "laser", not only because something happening to be in one of several films about a character doesn't rise to the typical level of salience, but also because other words on-board like "shark" and "astronaut" even moreso meet the criterion of featuring prominently in James Bond movies, and "astronaut" appears to be a game-ending choice.

Re: OpenAI's o1 Playing Codenames

#76
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on some of the more advanced tactics? When I play, it's mostly about getting a good 2 clue each time. Then if you can opportunistically get a 3 or 4, that's awesome. Some tactics come in for choosing the right pairs of 2's so you don't end up mismatched, or leaving clues that might be ambiguous with your opponent's... But that's mostly it. It'll be fun for multiplayer! Just like how in other online…

Other advanced tactics involve giving a broad clue that matches 3-4 of your own and just one other (either your opponents or a civilian). Your team can pick up all the matches across several turns and the one off doesn't hurt as much as the plus four helps

> the one off doesn't hurt as much as the plus four helps

Doesn’t the turn end if you hit the opponents word?

Re: OpenAI's o1 Playing Codenames

#77
I cracked myself up with a ridiculous train of thought for fun while playing Codenames once. It went a little something like this

Star => Twinkle => Twinkle Khanna => Married to Akshay Kumar => Canadian Citizen => Maple Syrup ( Leaf ? )

Re: OpenAI's o1 Playing Codenames

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol I played this game with my family and they said my wife and I were cheating because I kept using inside jokes that made no sense to them but she would get immediately.

That's a big part of what makes this game enjoyable - a clue that is very obvious to one person might not even cross the mind of someone else. To anyone reading this who hasn't played, it's definitely worth giving it a try.

Agreed, big fan of codenames in general but it plays its best when you’re playing against / alongside people that you’ve known for a while. The metagaming aspect of structuring clues to who your partner is really takes it to the next level.

Re: OpenAI's o1 Playing Codenames

#79
post #37
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these explanations are post-hoc. The best available evidence suggests this is also true of any explanations a human gives for their own behaviour; nevertheless we generally accept those at face value.

Of course! If you’ve played Codenames and introspected on how you play you can see this in action. You pick a few words that feel similar and then try to justify them. Post-hoc rationalization in action.

Except you also examine the rationalization as part of deciding whether to act on the impulse or not.

Re: OpenAI's o1 Playing Codenames

#80
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am similarly less-than-impressed. If you click through to the website, you can watch the replay of one of the games mentioned in the article (the one with the clue "invader"). In that instance, the clues all matched 2-3 words, and the winning team got lucky twice (they guessed an unclued word using an unintended correlation, and their opponent guessed a different one of their unclued words.) You also see a number o…

This is allowed by the rules though. You can guess +1 to the number specified.

They know it's allowed. It's also terrible and non-sensical strategy in the specific cases that are described.
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