Codenames without a scorekeeper: Teamzy balances the teams and keeps the leaderboard
Teamzy draws two teams balanced by level, you pick the winning team at the end, and the app keeps the match in the history. Over your game nights, you see who really wins most often among friends.
Codenames rules in 30 seconds
Codenames is a word-association game from Czech Games Edition in which two teams compete over a grid of 25 words. Each team has a spymaster. The two spymasters are the only ones to see the key card, which shows who each word belongs to, and each gives their team a single one-word clue followed by a number, to get several words guessed at once. The team that starts has 9 words to find, the other has 8, and one word in the grid is the assassin. There are no points: the first team to find all its words wins, and the team that picks the assassin loses at once. There is never a tie.
How a game of Codenames ends
There is nothing to count: the game stops as soon as a team has found all its words, or as soon as a team picks the assassin, in which case the other team wins. You can even win during the other team's turn, if they pick your team's last word by mistake. In Teamzy there is nothing to enter either way: you pick the winning team.
What Teamzy keeps from a match
| What counts | Points |
|---|---|
| Your team finds all its words | win |
| The other team picks the assassin | win |
| Tie | never |
A night with six friends, two balanced teams, one win
Lucas, Emma, Hugo, Léa, Nathan and Chloé make six. Each has a level at Codenames in Teamzy, from 1 to 5 stars. The app draws two teams balanced by level, so that the two teams' totals are as close as possible: the Eagles (Hugo, Léa, Nathan) against the Tigers (Lucas, Emma, Chloé). The draw does not choose the spymasters: the table does, here Nathan for the Eagles and Emma for the Tigers.
- 1The key card says the Eagles start: they have 9 words to find, against 8 for the Tigers. Nathan gives a clue, one word and a number, and Hugo and Léa find the two words he had in mind.
- 2The teams take turns. A team may keep going as long as it finds words of its own color, up to the number given by its spymaster plus one; a word of the other team, or a neutral word, ends the turn. The Tigers move faster: Emma gets Lucas and Chloé to find two or three words each turn.
- 3After several turns, the Tigers have just one word left, while the Eagles still have three to find.
- 4Emma gives her last clue. The Tigers agree on a word, but it is the assassin. The game stops on the spot: the Tigers lose, however many words they had found.
The Eagles win: the Tigers picked the assassin. They were one word short of winning, but it changes nothing: the team that picks the assassin loses at once, and there is never a tie.
In Teamzy, on the match screen, mark the Eagles as the winners. The match is saved in the history with its winning team: Hugo, Léa and Nathan get a win, Lucas, Emma and Chloé a match without a win. Before tonight, 5 matches of Codenames had already been played with other teams: the game details now put Léa first among the best mates, with 5 wins out of 6 matches, ahead of Hugo and Lucas (4 wins each). Teamzy draws the teams, remembers every match and keeps the leaderboard for you: all you have to do is play.
The questions that come up at the table
The first team to find all its words wins. If a team picks the assassin, it loses at once and the other team wins. If a team picks the other team's last word by mistake, the other team wins, even though it is not its turn. In Teamzy, you mark the winning team on the match screen: the match joins the history and the leaderboard.
The Codenames page and its rules on the Czech Games Edition siteThe game stops on the spot: the team that picked the assassin loses and the other team wins, however many words have already been found. That is why a spymaster checks, before giving a clue, that it does not lead to the assassin.
The key card, which only the spymasters see, tells which team starts. That team has 9 words to find, the other 8. The grid holds 25 words: 9 for the team that starts, 8 for the other, 7 neutral words and 1 assassin.
No. You do not score points: the game is played on the grid, and it stops as soon as a team has won. That is why Teamzy has no score sheet for this game: you pick the winning team at the end, and the app counts everyone's wins in the leaderboard. There is never a tie.
A standard game is played with at least four players, split into two teams that each have their spymaster. In Teamzy, a Codenames match is set up for 4 to 8 players in two teams. There is also a variant for two or three players, and other boxes, such as the two-player version or the one with pictures: Teamzy leaves them aside.
Give each mate a Codenames level, from 1 to 5 stars, then choose "Balanced by level" before you generate. Teamzy splits the players into two teams whose levels add up as close as possible; if several splits are equally good, it picks one at random, and "Reshuffle" offers another. The balanced draw is part of Premium (one-time purchase): without it, the teams are drawn at random. Teamzy does not draw the spymasters: your table chooses them.
With Teamzy: save each Codenames match with its teams and its winning team. The game details and the leaderboard show the mates who win most, with their number of wins and their win rate, and each mate's sheet traces their matches.
Your next Codenames game, with fair teams and a leaderboard
Draw balanced teams, pick the winning team, find your matches in the history and see who wins most often among friends. Free to start, Premium as a one-time purchase, no account and no ads.
