3v3 Codenames

And I said shed and box in case we needed back up. Roll with those 5?

Parade
Drum
Line
Shed
Box

Line

We can concede.

Mosquito
Black hole
Line
Wing
Round
Fork
Miss
Beer
Moses
Parade
Box
Drum
Jet
Gum
Blade
Bench
Shed
Cuckoo
Dragon
Back
Pitcher
Cap
Saloon
Quack
Match

So, I'm going to stop giving niche clues lol.

Cajon is Box/Drum/Bench, btw

Not sure why we thought it might be an illegal clue? I mean, I message IBD if I think a clue might be illegal anyway. But yeah, my bad for giving clues that might be common for me but not others...I think this is the second one I've done. I just didn't see any way we won from the start without some luck so I went for it.

Thank you for actually yolo'ing a list, we always should be doing that. There should never NOT be at least a one word list, even if it's just a guess. In this case, both shed and box were correct. Was hoping you would lead with those two given the unlimited clue. If the first was wrong, I probably would have just conceded. If the first was correct, n-1. If both, unlimited. But still, Line was an awful blocker but this was closer than it appears. Drum/Parade/Gum -> i was trying to go for something that got the first two but also implied stepping in gum or something. But Line killed me... Had line not been there, I may have gone with something like walking instead, but even 'back' was kind of a crappy blocker. Oh well...f that board.

This is a Cajon, btw. It's a box drum that you sit on while playing

I'd never heard of that in my life. Good clue though

Because cap wasn’t ours. I figured you’d bold cap and was fine with you doing so because it was neutral. This is what D1iab was talking about in the other thread about the “rule” of n-1 where you can never end on a 1-clue; the only way for me to avoid you ever guessing cap would’ve been to do a 1-clue first to get line off the board, but it was a blocker that I didn’t want off the board.

How else would you expect me to make my waitress clue without causing confusion? It was a 3-clue. I’d clued 5 words. We already had 5 words on the board. Why would cap automatically be ours if not for n-1? If I clued unlimited, then you guys would’ve been scouring the thread to find which word in addition to cap you should bold, rather than assuming waitress was a 3-clue + pass. Seems like a flaw.

Can we at least agree that in the future we will leave list words to the end of our turn if they’re not clear makeups? Again, I clued Sun - 3. Based on how I clued, you didn’t need to get another word for Sun. So why guess cap ahead of beer?

Putting cap first was just me being lazy on a copy paste. I'm pretty sure nich was joking with the beer/bottles thing at the end, and I couldn't be arsed to move it on my phone, so that's on me

I disagree, but Nich can confirm or deny.

Of course it was fine with cap being neutral, but what if cap was blue? Or orchid? Sure I could’ve clued for line first, but this would make it necessary when it wasn’t the optimal play. And the only way to absolutely guarantee you don’t bold cap is a zero clue. So now we’re wasting clues to avoid you guys guessing a word that was never clued for (we were 5/5 at that point).

Of course, it could’ve been spursed, but how often do the stars align? We were on track to be up 8-3 with blues having no idea what their first clue even meant. Risk-reward.

I still think n-1 is useful, but it’s also flawed. It’s less flawed than anything else that’s been brought to the table imo, which is why I still use it.

I think ignoring it in this specific case would have been smart - we nailed all the clues, and there was no reason to think we got lucky with cap.

I only did cap before beer because I wanted the beer bottles joke

I figured cap was our or it was neutral and you wanted us to get the 3 waitress words and then we end on neutral which doesn’t hurt anyway

If cap wasn’t ours then it was a word you hadn’t yet clued for so next turn you’d clue it and we would make up beer bottles then

Without that joke I woulda done cap last

Guessing cap before beer really surprised me. You had no makeup words. And just felt like pretending sun had a makeup words because n-1?

That makes sense lol

And yeah I guess there are specific cases where you can ignore n-1 like

Animals - 4:

Lion
Cat
Dolphin
Parrot
Pass

Piranha

Drinks - 2:

Beer
Lemonade

Pass

Soda

Fly - 2:

Plane
Jet

Now that was n-1 and we know soda isn’t gonna be ours or you woulda clued drinks 3 so we can guess the 2 and pass

But that is 100% obvious while cap is 80% obvious and I guess where is the line?

I use n-1 bc no prior agreement needed so I tend to not worry about these edge cases; if cap was assassin then I’d just clue waitress 3 before sun 2 so that there wasn’t a chance we had cap left over as an n-1 word

Haha sure, then you’ll just bold whatever the next word on your waitress list was.

This isn’t about cap, this is about words being regarded as makeup words even when there are no words to be made up.

Ah; perhaps a good line to take is to make it up if other team wins if we pass but if they only have 2-3 words like this game then just pass if you got all the words

The problem is we spurs a lot; so no line is perfect, which is why I default to the non-agreement deduction-based n-1 guess

But I see the merit in ignoring n-1 if other team is far behind (point of n-1 is you we lose if pass so you guess next word) and the makeup word is likely not ours since we likely got all the obvious ones for prior clue and didn’t spurs anything

It’s about this. It’s the assumption that you knew the list better than I did. Rather than acknowledging that I had clued the words I had intended to clue for, an endgame convention we use superseded my clue and made cap an auto-bold.

I’m arguing that is not an optimal play.

But I’m not interested in getting into an n-1 debate. I don’t need to be convinced if it’s merit. I’d just like to know how to keep my team from guessing an extra word when no makeups are needed. Changing the order of clues is convenient on paper, but there have been plenty of times where the discussion goes “yeah, these two are locks, but let’s list another word or two just because we should have a list.” How tf is a spymaster supposed to plan for those often peripheral, sometimes completely random list words?

Sorry, long-winded x-post

Yeah there is no perfect answer that works for everything

All I can say is I’ll consider passing here in the future if other team only has 3 and doesn’t have obvious path to catch up in one turn

I like this

I didn't know it was a word in an English dictionary.

Never heard of the instrument. Was worth a shot. Tough board, gg.

Interestingly merriam-webster.com has cajón listed, but the drum is not one of the definitions. I was good with it.

Looks like this round is nich/eb