Minotaur is

lol

subsurface - 1

Full write-up once the game is over but

Cliffs: this was a ****ing nightmare

pit
pop bottles

Gg

This variant definitely takes the fun out of thinking of alternate clues for the guessers and makes it a nearly impossible chore.

In for more tho

Maybe try out the 2 letters

this variant is tough

i don't even dislike it really, i like the really really creative thinking it promotes

but uh these teams seem to have been very mismatched so that made it a bit awkward. the other team never seemed to struggle the way we did, i'm a bit jealous.

I wish I were this smart lol

I SAID IT

nickel 4 - steel/lead/anchor/whistle

Yeah, there were several blockers here, but I was just hoping we'd get enough turns to be able to sort it out. Rust was obviously the worst because it was blue, but I felt that if I could see a 4 clue in this format, I should just go for it. Whisles are often nickel plated btw, but I didn't expect you to know that.

Nina 2 - chick/soul

I thought everybody knew who Nina Simone was, and I really wanted to not have to try to force link soul with anything else, because all my options seemed bad. The Nina ship never even crossed my mind, but it was a completely legitimate guess obv. Of course, now that anchor was ours, I figured I'd have to clue soul again anyway because you had no way of knowing that wasn't my intention.

nirvana 2 - soul/black hole

Once again, missed center here, maybe because I spent too long trying to come up with a word that didn't also hit Alps pretty solidly, which was the assassin. Whoops again, because you still liked it anyway.

nipples unlimited - jockey/ham

Yeah, this was another impossible spot really. How do you clue those words while avoiding minotaur? I used what I thought was the weirdest n body part to use in that situation, and most related to pigs. I probably would've said neck or nose otherwise, but I wasn't really expecting you to get it.

So yeah, the board was hard enough anyway, but having to use N here was just brutal. I think if this format continues, both spymasters should be using the same letter. It feels like a good letter rand may actually be more of an advantage than a good board rand imo.

Gg all. Sorry for the subpar clues, but I was just coming up empty.

I was shocked it took so long for blue to get pit. That may have been my first guess there.

I thought Nina was for Simone for soul but I didn't push for it. I should have fought harder for that, not that it mattered since we got a red word anyway.

i mean, s is the 1st place option and n is, i believe, 17th out of 18th

S has 25k words, N has about 8k?

Yeah, I was super jelly.

Btw Dels, did you seriously not know what a jockey was?

yes

Well, we were close

yeah it wasn't horrible. again, it was sort of 1 word off, since we were likely going to guess black hole and whistle, and we just needed to realize it was ham instead of centaur, which is very reminiscent of last game ("no, you need to pick that creature, not this one")

i won't play more because i need a codenames break. i'm just not good as spymaster and it takes me like hours to come up with a gameplan and i'd rather not be stressing over it unfortunately. but i do like the format and i'd play it again with single letter because i like the creativity required.

In for more

I like this format

With Dels out I can step aside and you folks can go 2v2 if you want to keep playing. It was a neat game to try. Some of the rands could end up pretty restrictive. I was thinking that maybe a spymaster could pick his/her own letter and stick with it, but then that doesn’t make the game that much different from regular 2v2.

Thx for starting this Prip. Was neat idea.

i'd do 2v2 or wait for another for 3v3, doesn't matter

Either way; just want to play it more; I like the limiting factor

Agreed, let's try the rand 2 letters and let each spymaster use both