Spy Words guide

A guide to Spy Words on OverTime: teams, roles, word packs, the clue panel, giving and reading clues, costly slips and team ratings.

How to play Spy Words

  • 4 to 8 players
  • 2 teams
  • 5x5 word grid

Overview

Objective

Two teams, Red and Blue, race to contact all of their own agents on a 5x5 grid of word cards. Each team has a spymaster who knows which cards belong to which team and gives clues, and operatives who guess based on those clues.

  • The board has 25 word cards: one team has 9 agents, the other has 8.
  • The remaining cards are 7 innocent bystanders and 1 assassin.
  • The first team to find all of their agents wins.
  • Touch the assassin and your team loses instantly.

Roles

Spymaster

One player per team. The spymaster sees every card's true color and gives one-word clues to steer their operatives toward the team's agents while avoiding bystanders, the other team's agents, and the assassin.

Operative

The rest of the team. Operatives see only the words (not the colors) and guess which cards their spymaster's clue points to. After the game starts you cannot swap between spymaster and operative.

Clues

Giving a Clue

On your team's turn, the spymaster gives a clue: a single word plus a number. The word hints at the meaning of one or more of your team's cards, and the number says how many cards relate to that clue.

  • The clue must be one word and cannot be a word printed on the board.
  • The number tells operatives how many cards the clue is meant to cover.
  • A clue of 0 means none of your cards match the word - it warns operatives away.

Guessing

Making Guesses

After the clue is given, your team's operatives select cards one at a time. You may make up to the clue number plus one guess, but you can stop early at any point.

  • Number + 1: a clue of 3 lets you make up to 4 guesses.
  • A clue of 0 (zero) gives unlimited guesses this turn.
  • Guess your own agent: the card is contacted and you may keep guessing.
  • Guess a bystander: the card is revealed and your turn ends.
  • Guess the other team's agent: it counts for them and your turn ends.
  • You must make at least one guess before you can end your turn.

Winning

How to Win

  • Contact all of your team's agents to win the game.
  • If you reveal the other team's last agent for them, they win.
  • Reveal the assassin and your team loses immediately - the other team wins.

Turn Timer

If the host enabled the turn timer, it bounds your team's whole turn - giving the clue and making guesses. If it runs out, play passes to the other team.

Before your first game

Spy Words is played online by four to eight people in two teams, Red and Blue. Each team needs a spymaster and at least one operative.

Teams and spymasters are usually chosen in the lobby. A team that arrives without a spymaster picks one when the game opens.

The host can add a turn timer of one, two or three minutes, and it is off by default. The host also chooses the word packs. Classic is on by default, and seven themed packs can be added, from Sci-Fi & Space to Food & Drink.

The spymaster types a clue word, picks a number from 0 to 9 and presses Give Clue. Operatives tap a card to guess, and an End Turn button lets them stop.

On the keyboard, the arrow keys move across the grid, and Enter or Space guesses the focused card. A chat panel lets the table talk through each clue.

Giving clues that land

As spymaster, look for pairs or trios of your agents that share an idea. A safe clue for two is worth more than a shaky clue for four.

Before you send a clue, read every other word on the board against it. The assassin and the other team's agents matter most.

Clues must be a single word made of letters only, so phrases, hyphens and digits are refused. A board word is refused only while its card is face down. Once it has been revealed, it becomes a legal clue.

A clue of 0 is a tool, not a pass. It tells your team which idea to avoid and frees them to guess as many cards as they like.

Reading clues as an operative

Start with the card you are surest of. A correct guess lets you keep going, so a confident first pick buys room for the harder ones.

The guess beyond the clue number is best spent on an agent left over from an earlier clue.

Read what the spymaster did not say. If an obvious match was left out, it may belong to the other team or be the assassin.

Talk it through in chat before anyone taps. A tap reveals the card at once, with no confirmation step.

Mistakes that cost games

Most lost rounds come down to one of these slips.

  • Tapping before the team agrees. Once a card is revealed, it cannot be taken back.
  • Spymasters joining the discussion. The chat is open to everyone, so fair play depends on spymasters keeping what they know to themselves.
  • Chasing every last guess. Stopping early is often wiser than spending a guess on a hunch.
  • Linking a clue to the assassin by accident. Check each clue against that one card before you send it.
  • Leaving the spymaster seat empty. If a spymaster drops out, an operative on that team has 60 seconds to take the role before the game promotes one.

Ratings and results

Spy Words matches are rated by team. Every player on the winning team is credited with the win, and each player's rating starts at 1500.

If one team never takes an action, the match is recorded unrated. A dropped connection keeps your seat for five minutes, and Rematch opens a new lobby.

Ratings follow the team result. An operative who talks the table out of a bad guess helps as much as the one who finds the last agent.

Where to go next

Spy Words: Co-op puts the whole group on one side against the board. You have 9 agents to find and a shared budget of 9 tokens.

Sketch & Guess keeps the same table talk but swaps word clues for drawings.