Know a variant your table plays? Add it to Codenames.
Sign in to add a houseruleFlip the timer at the start of every spymaster's turn rather than only when somebody reaches for it. The clue must be given before it runs out; if it is not, that team's turn is skipped and play passes. The printed rule sets no time limit at all — the timer is there for any player to flip at anyone taking too long, guessers included, and the rulebook even suggests flipping it on yourself. Making it automatic and one-sided is the change: every spymaster gets the same clock, and nobody has to decide when a pause has become a stall.
scribed by The-Archivist
Allow compound words in every written form as one-word clues: pack rat and mother-in-law are legal, not just greenhouse. The test is the dictionary — if it is listed as a headword in any of those forms, it counts. That keeps invented compounds out, since a made-up pairing like lunar squid for MOON and OCTOPUS is nobody's headword, and it settles the harder question the loosening creates: under the printed default you only ever ask whether a clue is written as one word, but once two-word compounds are legal somebody will ask whether swimming pool or board game is a compound at all. The dictionary answers that at the table instead of the table arguing it.
scribed by The-Archivist
