As Tom Gerhardt put it in the Studio Neat newsletter last month, Codenames is one of those party games that’s quick to play and good for all ages and abilities. More specifically, it’s a spy-themed word game with an element of deduction thrown in:

Two rival spymasters know the secret identities of 25 agents. Their teammates know the agents only by their codenames. The teams compete to see who can make contact with all of their agents first. Spymasters give one-word clues that can point to multiple words on the table. Their teammates try to guess words of their color while avoiding those that belong to the opposing team. And everyone wants to avoid the assassin.

YouTuber “The Rules Girl” made a 3-minute video concisely explaining how the game works:

While it’s a relatively easy and fun game to play, you should expect a certain amount of downtime during gameplay as each clue giver tries to come up with word clues for their team.

Get Codenames for just $15 on Amazon.