Jan 3rd, 2026 Saturday Cloudy
My husband would make a great sportsman.
That is to say, he respects fair competition, strives to do his best and obtain victory, and in cases of defeat, usually accepts the outcome with grace. He would review his own performance, noting areas of improvement and potential different strategies, and willing to try again. Even though he hardly ever puts on athletic shoes, he applies the same principles in other fields, like at work or in board games.
For the most part, it has been a pleasure to play any game with him – great teammate in cooperative ones, and worthy (but friendly) opponent in competitive ones. Except for Codename duet.
Codename is a well – known party game, with clue givers for each team take turns providing single word hints to their fellows, hoping to convey, out of the twenty-five cards on the table, which ones are their “safe agents”. The duet version adds a spin – the two players are in the same group, but they have varying views of the situation. Some cards are safe (indicated by green) from both sides, but most are not – there is even one green word on each side that happens to be an assassin on the other!
To top up the challenge, there is a time limit – the number of turns allowed, which would be further reduced in some scenarios if either of you makes more “neutral” mistakes than is permitted, since each mistake will cost two (instead of one) timer tokens. With fifteen correct words to cover and sometimes only three chances to offer fairly creative cues, it is often necessary to take risks, and winning is rare.
Honestly, it does not bother me if we end up losing – I find the process of coming up with original ideas to link seemingly unrelated words fascinating, and I particularly enjoy the insight I gain in the course of the communication.
However, my husband takes each failure very harshly. The following conversation (or something similar) has been repeated many times ever since I bought him the game as a Christmas gift:
“How can we possibly win unless I can think of a genius word that tie four words together?” he ranted with frustration.
And before I could respond, he added, “and even if I did find that perfect word, you still would not get it!”
To such “accusation”, I only sighed with a shrug, “well, if you KNOW that I would not get it, why did you choose it? And how can such a clue be considered as ‘perfect’, or even ‘good’?”
The purpose of communication is to share what is in one person’s head with another person, who of course has no access to the first person’s mental world. Regardless of methods, if this sharing is successful, the communication can be deemed effective; otherwise it is like a nice kick of a soccer ball, drawing a beautiful trajectory in the air, yet with no recipient to catch it.
Learning to really take another person’s perspective while drafting your message of communication is a lifelong lesson that requires constant training and practice, and few people master it naturally. And I believe it a worthwhile skill to keep developing.
That is okay, because it gives me more excuses to bring out the game, at least on a day when my husband seems appeasable 😛