Recommendation: A Board Game All About Words

My wife and I have been playing a word game called Codenames that we find works best with six to ten people, divided into two teams. Every time we play, there’s a lot of laughter and in-game drama.

Full disclosure: it’s hard not to really, really want to win this game so there’s inevitably some temporary tension and frustration.

We play with friends and family. It’s a simple game to learn, a hard game to master.

Basically, on each team there’s a clue-giver of one word clues to teammates who need to guess which of the 25 one word cards laid out on the table the clue-giver is hinting at. Only the two clue-givers can see a grid revealing which of the 25 cards are theirs and which are their opponents.

So, to use a simple example, if the clue-giver sees on the board that two of their team’s words are Saturn and Mars, the clue-giver might say “planets-2.” The “2” means the team should try to guess two words.

Hard to explain, but I promise, after one game, you’ll get it.

The team that gets all their clues right first wins.

Bottom line: Codenames is a great way to have fun in real life.

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