Spy Words: Co-op guide

Overview

Objective

Everyone is on the same team. Work together to contact all of your agents on a 5x5 grid of word cards before your shared token budget runs out. One player is the spymaster who knows every card's identity and gives clues; the rest are operatives who guess.

• The board has 25 word cards: 9 agents, 13 bystanders, and 3 assassins.
• Find all 9 agents to win.
• Each bystander you reveal spends one token. Run out and you lose.
• Reveal an assassin and the game ends in an instant loss.

Roles

Spymaster

One player. The spymaster sees every card's true identity and gives one-word clues to steer the operatives toward agents while avoiding bystanders and the assassins.

Operatives

Everyone else. Operatives see only the words and guess which cards the spymaster's clue points to. Roles are fixed once the game starts.

Clues

Giving a Clue

On the clue phase, the spymaster gives a single word plus a number. The word hints at the meaning of one or more agent cards, and the number says how many agents relate to it.

• 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 gives unlimited guesses this turn.

Guessing

Making Guesses

After the clue, operatives select cards one at a time. You may make up to the clue number plus one guess, and you can stop early at any point.

• Reveal an agent: progress! Keep guessing until you run out.
• Reveal a bystander: spend a token and the guess turn ends.
• Reveal an assassin: the team loses instantly.
• You must make at least one guess before you can end the turn.

Winning

Win and Loss

• Win: contact all 9 agents before the tokens run out.
• Lose: run out of tokens with agents still hidden.
• Lose: reveal an assassin at any point.

Token Budget

Tokens are shared by the whole team. Every wrong (bystander) guess costs one, so coordinate carefully and stop guessing when you are unsure.