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Your team stares at you, looking for guidance.

On the table before them is a 5x5 grid of cards, and each card holds a single word. Their mission is to select only those words that belong to your team; choosing a word that belongs to the opposing team could give away points, while accidentally selecting the hidden assassin immediately ends the match. The only clue as to which cards are safe to select comes from you, the team's spymaster, and it can only be a single word—followed by the number of cards to which it applies.

Codenames Price $20 (when in stock) Author Vlaada Chvátil Publisher Czech Games Editionp Players 2-8+ Age 14+ Time 15 min BGG rank #1 party game

It sounds simple enough when you first look out over the board. According to the secret diagram viewable only by the two spymasters, you must get your team to select the words "star" and "fire." You rack your brain for a single word that will suggest these other two words and eventually decide on "gas." What are stars but burning balls of gas? And gas burns in the controlled fires we set every day on our stove tops. A perfect clue!

"Gas, two," you say, and your team's eyes all shift down from your face to the grid of cards. They begin to discuss—and a sick feeling settles in to your stomach.

The team has spotted other words on the board that might be "gas"-related.

"Air!" says someone. "Air is made of gas."

"Good point," says another. And you 'drill' for natural gas in the ground."

If the rule book did not explicitly demand that a spymaster must "keep a straight face," you would be banging your head on the table in frustration.

"Hmm," says a third player. "Stars are also flaming balls of gas... But the clue only points to two cards.'"

Hope rises within you. The team scans the table. Surely someone will suggest '"fire" next and the sheer genius of your clue will become clear to all!

It is not to be. The players pick "air" and "star," giving one point to your team and one to the opposing team.

Finding connection

Welcome to Codenames, the hot new party game from Czech designer Vlaada Chvátil (Galaxy Trucker, Mage Knight). How hot is it? Over at Boardgame Geek, Codenames has already been voted the top party game in existence.

Thanks to its popularity, the game has been hard to find, but I managed to snag a copy for $20 at a recent tabletop gaming convention—and I'm glad I did. Codenames can be taught in two minutes and should appeal even to non-gamers, making it a perfect title to have on hand this holiday season.

The theme here is... thin. Each word purports to be the codename of a secret agent, which you have to guess because—you know what, who cares?

The genius lies in the fact that all players from both teams can see the complete grid of words at all times, while only the spymasters can see the chart showing which words belong to which team. Some other words don't belong to either team but to "innocent bystanders." If chosen, these result only in the end of a turn. And one word belongs to the game-ending assassin, so the spymasters must make doubly sure that any clue they give can't possibly be interpreted as pointing to that card.

The trick is finding a clue that can span two, three, or even four words (very hard) at once—knowing full well that the more words you aim at, the more tenuous the link between the codenames and your clue will invariably become. (The manual explicitly warns spymasters not to tell their teams that a particular clue might be a bit of a stretch. "You are playing Codenames," it says. "It's always a bit of a stretch.")

For those making the guesses, the game is all about trying to decide how far a spymaster's mind might go. If the clue is "sucks, three," might the cards be both "octopus," "vacuum," and even.... "war?"

Though by no means a strategy game, there is a bit more depth here than meets the eye. A team may elect to go beyond the number of cards suggested by its spymaster, for instance. In our example above, the team struck out by choosing the word "air," but team members still know that the clue "gas" refers to one unguessed card on the grid. Later in the game, when the opposing team has correctly selected the "drill" card for a clue of its own, it suddenly becomes clear that the clue "gas" must refer to "fire" after all. Then the team may select "fire" even though it is unrelated to the current clue. Such strategies often spell the difference between success and failure.

The first team to correctly select all of its codenames wins.

In my four plays, the game proved terrific for groups. If there's a downside, it can be the pacing. As cards are chosen and fewer remain unclaimed on the grid, spymasters sometimes take too long trying to generate clues that can link multiple, implausible connections. When both sides do this over several rounds, team members can find themselves doing nothing during the other spymaster's "thinky time," then doing nothing while the other team debates the clue, then doing nothing during their own spymaster's pondering, finally doing something only when their clue is actually given. This can kill the game's energy.

To compensate, the game includes a sand timer, but it's only used by players impatient that things are taking too long. (A timing app is also available online from the developer for those who want to more strictly time their turns.) More important than timing is the need to push spymasters to be thinking during their opponents' turns and have clues ready to go quickly.

Once this issue is addressed with your group, Codenames teaches easily and plays quickly (15 minutes or less per round). It's light but appealing, and when the first round ends, players will want to go again—everyone likes a turn as the spymaster. In my group of eight, most people went out and bought the game after playing once. It's hard to offer a higher recommendation than that.

As long as you don't expect more from Codenames than it offers, this is a terrific choice for a family friendly game—again, it's perfect for holiday play.