“Death 3” he says and I know what he means.  I jump to my move.

And man was it disastrous.

Death. It is our fourth game of Codenames that night. It plays fast, and for some reason has that potato chip magic of "can't have just one".

That could imply surgery... war... black...

We scanned the gird. Death. Death. 3 words on the grid had something to do with death.

It has nothing to do with spies, codes, or any useless thematic crap like that. This is advanced password with shades of verbal Dixit.

Death 3.

That means somehow, my goth son has determined that 3 of the cards on the board somehow link to death. Rhyme? Synonym? Cause?

But its early game. Early game is so hard.

The guy who knows all the words you're hunting for (clue-giver? Agency head? Whatever...) has the absurd task of getting some sense in the random words. And he wants a lot to link together somehow. The more the better. How many of the 25 words can you possibly link by some theme? And not allow the guessers to stumble upon words that belong to the other team - oh - the enemy.

So being the clue-giver is really hard at the start - just too many words to absorb. And really hard at the end - those words are left because you couldn't figure out any decent clues.

Death... 3...

Surgery. That's an iffy one. Sure, it can absolutely lead to death. War, we agree on war. My pacifist goth son would clearly make that connection.

Black?

That's a given. After all, we call him my goth son for a reason. From the clothing, to the nails, to the eyeliner, he looks like a Tim Burton extra.

So now the challenge - what clue would transmit from him to me and my friend Chris that all three of us would immediately know somehow made sense linked to Death?

Now, at really high level play, it works best with intimate groups of people who all know each other, so you can give clues that make sense to YOUR guys, but not the other team. My son and I often use subtle Warcraft clues that we know will simply baffle the opposing team so they can't gain insight from our clues. More than once we've used our character names as clues referring to a color or word.

It's these weird venn diagrams of shared knowledge (or HOPEFULLY shared) that make the game compelling. You HOPE the other guys on your team think your way.

Then... then there's the possibility that your ream thinks more like the clue-giver than the clue-giver does.

Chris and I are SURE on Black and War for death.

"NOTE!" I shout. "It's gotta be NOTE!"

Now the readers of this review just split into two groups. Those who are going "WTF?" and those who are going "Ohhhhh, of course."

Deathnote: A popular Japanese Manga about a demons, detectives and a magic book that can kill people by having their name written in it.

Also - my son's favorite manga. Again, going back to that whole goth thing.

This is the first move. A nice 3 guess is well within reason.

Ah. Death: Black. Death: War. Death: Note.

We tap each card in succession, showing our choice.

"WE WIN!" shouts my daughter. HUH?! She's on the other team!!! What the heck just happened?!

"NOTE IS THE ASSASSIN!" she yells. Choosing the assassin immediately loses the game for your team.

I look at my son. "but.... deathnote.... It's... deathnote..."

His mouth is wide and he's shaking his head. "I didn't even see the word note, I didn't think that at all. It was black, war and surgery..."

dammit
TLDR: Infuriating password with too many answers.