Codenames Duet is a two-player version of the smash hit party game Codenames. We started playing this version during lockdown when of course we could not have any parties. This is a co-operative version where you and your fellow player are trying to successfully guess all of the spies without getting caught out by the assassins or running out of time.

This sounds far more thematic than perhaps it is, during the game you are trying to come up with clues that will link multiple words on the board to help them to guess the spies. The game does not have a board, but for each game you will deal out cards into a rectangular grid. These cards all have words on, these will be random things like broth, elephant, rainstorm and carrot cake. You will be trying to get your fellow player to guess all the words you have linked together.

The tricksy part about this game is that you have very few turns and only a small margin for error, so you will need to be on the same page. You will be trying to link together words like perhaps you could link “tail”, “castle” and “wing” together with the clue “fairy”. Thing is though, that it is fairytale not tail, but you have to hope that your fellow player will understand that and guess that and not “pebble”. Sometimes you will win, and sometimes you will be howling laughing at the utter ridiculousness of the clues that you have been given. The great thing is that you will be working together, so it will be winning or loading as a team.

If you want to find a game to play with your teen or your significant other and really work together then you cannot go wrong with Codenames Duet. This is a great two player variant on the smash-hit party game, and you can play through the whole campaign if you want to try and vary the difficulty. In our case however, we still need more practice with understanding the way each other’s mind works when giving strange clues. We will continue to have an absolute blast doing this for a long time to come though.

Editors note: This post was originally published on 24th May 2023. Updated on 7th March 2024 to improve the information available