When a new game of Code Names starts, all of the words are randomly assigned to either the Red Team 
, Blue Team 
, Neutral 
, and one is assigned the Assassin 
.
One person on each team is randomly chosen as the Code Giver for that team, as denoted by the 
. These two Code Givers are able to see the map of which cards are each color (pictured below).
The team who goes first has nine words to guess, the other team has eight. The Code Givers will take turns giving their teammates clues to try to get them to guess the words that are their color.
The Code Giver wants to make sure their clues only reference the words that match their team's color, not the opponents color, the neutral color, or the Assassin.
For their turn, the Code Giver will give a clue that is one word and one number. The single word is related to or references specific word-cards on the game board that are the Code Giver's team's color. And the number says how many of the word-cards that clue applies to.
A team's turn continues until they guess wrong (click on a word that isn't their team's color), until they choose to stop guessing, or until they get their last word and win the game!
Each turn, a team gets the number of guesses their Code Giver defined for that clue, and has the option to guess 1 additional word. This guess is usually used if there were clues from earlier in the game that were not used or passed without a guess.
If you guess one of your opponent's words, that gets them one word closer to winning, and ends your turn. If you guess a Neutral word, your turn ends, but it doesn't help your opponent get any closer to winning.
However, if you guess the Assassin word, the game immediately ends and the other team wins! As a Code Giver, always keep an eye on the Assassin and make sure your clue won't lead your team to it.
As the game progresses, the board will start to show the colors for each word as teams guess them.
And eventually, one team will get all of their words and win!
...Or gues the Assassin and lose!
