Codenames League - Match Thread A

Nope! You guys nailed the four for Fairy, with horseshoe in the way because of luck, which I get. Thankfully snowman was next in line.

For lead, it was both the “on a leash” possibility as well as something called a “lead pig,” which sounded familiar but it was kind of a Hail Mary.

You talking yourself out fair was frustrating, especially when stream was the other consideration. I was encouraged by your post to Donk explaining why fair was a fit, but then your next post was that you thought lead/stream were best haha. But we got incredibly lucky by you guys bolding lead over stream, leaving fair at the top of their list.

If garden wasn't their clue and Fair wasn't top of their list I would have argued for it more strongly. I didn't want to give them a freebie (even though we did anyway with stream).

When I saw combustable I thought engine and fence. You can burn most fences.

Might have got a bit lucky here, but a win is a win.

So it was fence

2nd on our list so a layup if he doesn’t clue 2 for no reason

Why so stubborn when this is a game of communication and we have a way to communicate that fence is ours?

When it comes to the endgame, probably best to throw the other team’s list out the window when a clue hits. Guessing a word the other team is going to guess next turn anyway if given the chance is way better than gifting them a word that hasn't even been clued.

In this exception that proves the rule, we got lucky by a) you guessing lead at all, b) you guessing lead before stream, c) fair staying at the top of their list because d) no one knows how Ervin clues.

If you’d guessed fair and anything other than lead/stream they win with a jet clue next turn.

Yaaaarg if it was just D1 I would have clued combustion - 1, expecting him to know Fair would be unlimited and I wanted Fence. Moving forward I will always do it that way and should have done it this way, with Nich on the team with a 1 clue I thought the dialogue would go something like

"Oh it's a one clue, Ervin always does something confusing and it's so difficult to understand, well if it's not Fair that's on him let's go engine and fair"

I don't get the constant confusion every time on the last turn which made me think I needed to do a 2 clue(and a Fence is probably the most combustible thing on there) but this was a prime example of where I would use 1 and I will going forward so that's kind of on me. But to clear up the confusion it's a very simple - if the top word of our list is ours, I will usually use unlimited unless there is some other reason. That was the reason for unlimited earlier - just to get ivory, which you should 0 business guessing because you hit the 4 mythology words and shouldn't looking for a 5th - so in this case I wanted you to get a "backup" word that would never be guessed normally/you absolutely should stop guessing before getting to it on a normal number clue.

On another note, isn't Fairy as a clue when Fair is up there absolutely illegal?? No one else said anything so I was going to wait until the end of the game to comment as I didn't want to ruin the game in case I was wrong but....how is that a legal clue?

I think it’s way different than clueing fairground or something, but yeah, it’s a fine push and one that we could’ve discussed via PM. I think it’s obvious my intention with the clue was not to include fair, because that would’ve been ridiculous (and the team didn’t suggest or consider it because, you know, it would’ve been ridiculous). You didn’t have to wait until after the game, and we could’ve gotten a ruling from someone not playing. It’s not like the only way to bring it up would be to post in the thread “that’s not legal, because one of blue’s words is fair!”

If you’re a spymaster, you have a responsibility to dispute the legality of clues. Do it via PM, and have a discussion with the other spymaster.

If fairy was intended for Fair then it would be against the rules.

If the word Fairy was a compound word of Fair and Y then it would be against the rules.

This was neither of those things. The word fairy just happened to have the string of letters F-A-I-R in it.

Clueing thinking when king is on the board 👍

Clueing football when foot is on the board :thumbdown:

That's my read on the whole thing anyway.

yea I shoulda messaged, even thinking/king is only half of the word, we're talking 80% of the same letters here lol

i'm trying to think of another similar example, it's obviously not something like estate/state which seems illegal, but it does seem worse than something like spot/pot which I guess is OK

Ervin, if you're gonna clue differently to everybody else, you've at least gotta be consistent. There is a reason people are constantly confused by how you clue.

And if you are gonna give a 2-clue at the end for no reason, why not just clue mower? I'm sure we could at least decipher the intention there. Combustible was such a bizarre choice.

I didn't think of lawnmower that woulda been a solid clue lol

But yea I'll be consistent, all the chatter of "who knows what he's doing"(and not just this game) got to me but you actually understand, it's not that complicated

If I stayed true to my convictions we woulda won too

I would have argued for fence Erv if that makes any difference

I wanted to clue combustible - 1 so I'd have my intended endgame logic + clear equity to another word but all the chatter about stuff being confusing I thought a clue for 2 would just be the most clear.

But ok, I'm sticking with my conviction from here on out! If there's a debate every game about how unlimited wanting the top word is confusing so be it!

I was using the same endgame strat as you until just recently, so you should know I know how that works. The 2-clue combined with the fact we didn't know how many words garden was for is what lost us the game.

And you don't have to "add equity" to a word as long as the intention is clear. In fact, that also helps to just confuse matters. Just hard clue for the one word you want and the rest works itself out.

I do think it's a mistake to clue unlimited for just 1 word with 5 words still left tho. It's much more important to know how many words you're cluing for than picking up a solitary word that hasn't been clued for yet imo. Cluing unlimited with 2 or 3 words left is the only time I would do that.

To me that's a prime time to use unlimited

I had 5 words, all of them pretty annoying to link in some fashion(mostly due to blockers) - ivory was particularly annoying so it'd be great to go 2+2 and you pick that up

With 2 turns left I don't think there's that many motivations for unlimited, it's either run the board now(which it wasn't) or make it an easy 2 turner/get a word that's hard to add into a 3 clue

And you should never guess it by itself of course since you got all 4 from the first clue

The problem was that garden hit so many words, which made it impossible to decipher. If you gave an unlimited that clearly hit just 2 words, then it would be more useful. As it was, it did seem like we spursed some stuff and were supposed to run the board.

I'm actually still a bit unclear. Was stream not a garden word?

I wanted Ivory, and then Carrot and one of Stream or Fence. I thought ground had a good chance to be guessed which would be fine if you had stream and/or fence backup and I could clear it up on the last turn

Kinda got a poor runout for that turn where you guessed Ground and moved Fair above the other words so I couldn't do unlimited again

It still should have been a win and I should have trusted you with the 1 clue, I was scared nich would push the n-1 = Fair is ours really hard which is why I gave a 2 clue to make sure Fair wasn't guessed but I'll trust people know what I'm after next time

Game 9

Red
Xander (s)
Nich
Neil

Blue
PC (s)
DZ
insanity

Bee
Calf
Drawing
Dryer
Eye
Fever
Fire
Fuel
Grass
Greenhouse
Helicopter
Ice
Leaf
Mile
Plane
Play
Rainbow
Reindeer
Saturn
Scuba diver
Shower
Sugar
Temple
Trunk
Unicorn

hail - 2

Hail is an ice shower

Rainbow temple for backups

bump for neil

ice
shower
pass

rainbow
temple

is where I'm at; bold if agree or discuss if have other options

Shoot sorry.

2? Interesting.

Gotta be

Ice
Shower

Rainbow
Temple