I love the board game Codenames. The online version is even better, because you can add your own words. However, I have ideas for a more intense version of the game.
The normal game is a ton of fun, but the fun mostly comes just from the guessing. There are limited tactics and very little strategy. Often the margin of victory is decided by a single turn.
My solution is to make the guessing process richer. Typically in my experience, 2 word guesses dominate. I would like to see more 3's, and even the occasional 4. But the way the standard Codenames works, that is nearly impossible. So here are the changes I would make:
Expand to a 6x6 grid
This will give substantially more opportunity for finding multiple connections.
Eliminate 1 Strike You're Out
To encourage guessing higher numbers, and to counteract the increased chance for false matches that will come with more cards in the grid, tweak the rules to allow the turn to continue after a wrong guess. I think some experimentation will be necessary to find the ideal. I toyed with the idea of 1 wrong neutral guess being allowed, but I am thinking maybe it should be just 1 wrong guess (after all, a wrong guess that exposes the other teams card is worse than a neutral). It would be prohibited to guess more answers than remaining cards (e.g. if your team has 3 cards and other team has 6, you can't guess 5 to get extra bites at the apple, you can only guess 3 or lower).
In conjunction, I would eliminate the "continuation guess" that is currently allowed, if you don't successfully use all guesses from a prior turn.
Possibly Decrease the Number of Neutral Cards
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