[zeroonetwothree]

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 better than a random human who hasn’t played much. Just I find the post’s level of hype overstated. It feels like the author isn’t very experienced with Codenames.

It would be interesting to compare AI:human vs human:human games to see which does better. It seems like AI:AI will overstate its success.

[dang]

Ok, we've taken supergoodness out of the title now. Presumably the post is still interesting!

(Submitted title was "I got OpenAI o1 to play the boardgame Codenames and it's super good".)

[groggo]

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 games you can add in a AI to play as one of the players.

[jncfhnb]

If you really want to get good, your goal is not so much to get as many tiles as possible, but rather to get the tiles that are semantically distinct from your opponent’s. A single mistake that triggers your opponent’s tile is generally enough to lose the game. And even if they don’t do it, having them uncover the tiles from their side that are semantically similar to your own team is also useful.

If you want to get nasty, you learn to abuse the fact that the tile layouts follow rules and that you can rule out certain tiles without considering the words.

[groggo]

Memorizing the tile layouts is too much for me haha (imo against the spirit of the game). I usually play online now anyway so I hope they don't follow those same patterns as the physical version.

[joshvm]

Online specifically avoids this by randomising the grids, except in some modes like mirrors where you can't do much to preserve symmetry.

[bentcorner]

> you learn to abuse the fact that the tile layouts follow rules and that you can rule out certain tiles without considering the words.

Can you clarify? Isn't the card placement random?

[tveita]

There are 40 setup cards with 4 possible rotations that specify agent placements, so it's theoretically possible to do some kind of memorization.

Personally I'd find that kind of play style very unfun, and would rather switch to fully randomized boards if I played enough that it became a problem.

https://danluu.com/codenames/

[jncfhnb]

It’s randomish. There are facts about the possible layouts you can memorize.

I don’t know most of these rules but there’s never 5 in a row; or even 4 in a row if you’re the team with one fewer (second team to play).

Edit: because the game layout is determined by choosing one of a few dozen possible layout cards and randomly rotating it

[mtmickush]

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

[hunter2_]

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 for its own cards plus the prior cards.

Example: The clue is "places 4" and the guessers choose 1 correctly and then 1 wrong answer, but they had achieved consensus about 2 others (and are confused about only the remaining 1). So the turns ends but they inform the clue giver to inflate by 2 next turn. That clue giver (after the other team goes) will then say the clue is "people 5" and the guessers will know that they shall select 2 places and 3 people.

This can cascade beyond just a pair of turns.

[ruds]

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.

[hunter2_]

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 instruction during gameplay. That would certainly extend beyond giving a clue! The guessers must know that their clue giver can play this way prior to the game commencing.

Edit: I just consulted the rules and this is the most relevant section:

> If you are a field operative, you should focus on the table when you are making your guesses. Do not make eye contact with the spymaster while you are guessing. This will help you avoid nonverbal cues.

> When your information is strictly limited to what can be conveyed with one word and one number, you are playing in the spirit of the game.

The author's use of the pronoun "you/your" switches from field ops in that first paragraph to spymasters in that second paragraph, confusingly. With that in mind, it boils down to this: field ops cannot seek non-clue information from spymasters, and spymasters cannot convey non-clue information. The strategy I'm suggesting involves neither!

[ALittleLight]

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.

[spencerflem]

I played in a Codenames tournament at CGE's stand at GenCon, and they forbid guessers from communicating at all. Officially, its supposed to be just the clue and number and nothing else.

Of course, I never play this way in my own games

[ta_1138]

The communication is only necessary/important if people haven't set this as a convention in the first place. I'll say that prior to ever looking at my clues: "I will give you higher numbers than what I said if you miss by more than 1. THe number I pick will always be high enough as to allow you to, with the +1 guess you get for free, make guesses on all the words I was hinting at.

There's also all kinds of not necessarily intended communicaton from the guessers in the fact that you can listen to which words they were considering and didn't pick. Nothing in the game attempt to say that you should not consider, say, whether they were going in the right or wrong direction in their guessing, but it sure can make a difference in how to approach later clues. If they were being very wrong, there might be a need to double up on words that you intended, and that your guessers missed.

In the same fashion, nothing in the game saying that I cannot listen to those guesses as a member of the other team, whether guesser or spymaster, and then change behaviors to make sure we don't hit words they considered as candidate words without very good reasons. Let them double dip on mistakes, or not make their difficult decisions easier. It's not as if the game demands that everyone that isn't currenly guessing should wear headphones to be sure they disregard what the other team says or does.

[foota]

You can of course play however you want (and I certainly think this is clever), but imo this is likely against the spirit, and perhaps letter, of the rules.

The rule on giving clues is:

"If you are the spymaster, you are trying to think of a one-word clue that relates to some of the words your team is trying to guess. When you think you have a good clue, you say it. You also say one number, which tells your teammates how many codenames are related to your clue." (emphasis mine).

The rule states that the number should be the number of words related to the clue. There is later provisions allowing you to use zero and infinity, but outside of these carve-outs (and imo the "allowed" language is telling here, since it implies any other number not equal to the number of words is not allowed) I don't think this is legal.

[hunter2_]

Indeed, a good Codenames-playing bot should know how to do all of this, in addition to using its LLM to generate great clues.

[n4r9]

Yeah, in fact we tend to play without a limit on the number of guesses, just to avoid this sort of loophole. In variants like Codenames Duet I think there's also no limit on the number of guesses.

Another thing the guessers can do if unsure about one of the tiles from the last round, is to tell the clue giver which tile they think it was. The clue giver then tries to give a clue that either tenuously links to it or clearly excludes it. That can give the clue more scope for linking to several other words. It risks giving information to the other team though so is more of an final turn play.

[lostlogin]

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

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

[topaz0]

Yes, but they can go back for those words in future rounds

[harrall]

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.

[blix]

experienced players who know their teammates well can reliably get 3-4s. if you only go for safe 2s against these opponents you will lose every time.

[lupire]

They should at least play with two different AI models.