Even if you know Codenames, please read these rules as Duet is played very differently.
In Codenames duet, you will be playing as a pair trying to collectively find every agent on the board, you will know half of the agents and your partner will know the other half
Twenty-five code name cards, each bearing a word, are laid out in a 5×5 rectangular grid, in random order. Both you and your partner will have a private grid card showing the locations of your agents, on your grid you will have 9 agents (green), 3 assassins (black) and the rest are innocent bystanders (white). Your goal is to find 15 agents between you (3 of the words will be agents in both grids).
You will take turns being clue-givers and giving clues relating to the locations of agents from your own grid (whilst you are the clue-giver, only your grid matters).
Words given must follow standard codenames word rules, please check the rules in post 0 to find out what words are legal and illegal. You may ask me if a word is legal if you're unsure (I request you use discord where possible for this as I'll be quicker to respond there)
The guesser may make as many guesses as they want providing that they are always guessing correctly, upon 1 failed guess the turn passes and clue-givers are swapped, you may also decide to just simply pass your turn.
Incorrect guessed words may still be guessed by your partner, these words are not out of the game completely
To make a clue, guess or pass turn you must make it clear by doing it in capitals e.g: CLUE: WEATHER-2, GUESS: STORM, PASS TURN.
You may make a list of guesses in 1 post however you must order them in the order in which you are planning to have them revealed, if an earlier guess is incorrect then the rest of your guesses are ignored. E.g if you guessed BLUE, STORM and blue was wrong then the turn passes to your partner and we don’t find out whether storm is correct.
Either player may go first, just simply the first to find a good starting clue, you keep playing the game until you have managed to find all 15 agents. Clue-givers must alternate between turns unless one clue-giver has run out of agents on their board, at this point they must state this to their partner (Until this moment you may never state how many agents you have left to find)
Rules of communication: When you are the clue giver, you may only post in the thread to post your clue and to say whether a word is right or wrong. When you are the guesser, you may post your thoughts into the thread about which words you believe are related to the clue, but that's all you're allowed to talk about.
This game will be judged on strikes with the teams on the lowest strikes winning, the strikes are as follows:
1 strike for every clue given
1 strike for every innocent bystander hit
10 strikes for every assassin hit
2 strikes for any illegal clue given (as described above)(This is as well as the standard 1 point for giving a clue)(You may purposely give an illegal clue if you believe it will be cost-effective on points)
Every pair will be playing the exact same setup, this will be both the words on the grid and which words are agents/assassins.
The games will be self-moderated, so you tell your partner when they get words right or wrong and adjust the grids accordingly.
Failure to submit an action 48 hours after the previous action will result in a time token, in the event of a tie the team with the fewest time tokens will win... This tiebreaker will be the first tiebreaker looked at. You may prod your partner at any time.
A player may pause their game if they need to go on V/LA for whatever reason (but please don't abuse this, only use it if you need to)
The pair with the fewest strikes will win, if there's a tie then the following tie-breakers are taken into consideration:
The pair with the best individual clue given (e.g giving a clue for 4 words and all 4 being guessed)
The pair with the most agents found in 1 turn (regardless of the clue number)
Secrets of the grid card:
All grid cards are designed according to the below diagram, you may use this to your advantage
From the 9 words you see as being green, 3 of them are also green on your partners grid card, either of you may guess these words.
From the 3 words you see as being black, 1 of them is green on your partners card, meaning that you must guess one of your black words, however 1 of your black words is also black on your partners card and the other one is white.
Official rules can be found here:
https://czechgames.com/files/rules/code ... les-en.pdf (Please note that some rules may have been changed for the sake of it being online)