You clearly don't understand the article since it's not about clues at all, but entirely about guessing.
Basically, the claim is that based entirely on the pattern of the board (revealed red, blue, and white cards), there are so few legal board configurations (the cards that the spymasters are using), that the field operatives can ignore the hint the spymaster gave, and guess correct cards anyway based on the board's revealed information.
Effectively, a game where the red team uses this strategy might go like this:
Red Team Spymaster: Word unlimited
Red Team Field Operatives: <pick card at random, get white at the lower right>
Blue Team Spymaster: <Real Hint> 2
Blue Team Field Operatives: <pick 2 correct cards at the upper left>
Red Team Spymaster: Word unlimited
Red Team Field Operatives: "Well, there's only one spymaster card with a white card in the lower right and two blue cards in the upper left, so now we know where every card is and can pick all the red cards" <wins>
In a real practical implementation here, the spymaster would probably actually clue "<death card hint> 0" each turn in order to ensure their team can safely pick at random until there's enough information to know which board they're on.
We had a game once where one team was starting to look at that card because of previous hints and the spymaster did exactly that to say "don't do it", but because the hint was for that card they ignored the number and picked it that round.
"Sometimes you may have multiple unguessed words related to clues from the previous rounds. If you want your team to guess more than one of them, you may say unlimited instead of a number."
You can't use "unlimited" as you're proposing - it's allowed only if there are multiple unguessed words from previous clues.
That said, the "0" approach isn't banned by the rules and would work the same way.
> You clearly don't understand the article since it's not about clues at all, but entirely about guessing.
Not entirely about guessing. In fact, guessing isn’t involved at all, at least not after the first turn.
You left out that to do this, you need to have memorized basically all of the spymaster cards, or enough of them to increase the odds of you figuring out the configuration.
This is basically the same as the cheat in the memory match game in Super Mario Bros. 3 where you uncover matching power ups [1], and receive the power ups that you successfully uncover — but there are only 8 possible boards, so it’s way easier vs. this Codenames cheat.
Even if this is not technically considered cheating, it definitely would feel like cheating, since again you need to have knowledge of most of the spymaster cards. (And it goes without saying, this is definitely against the spirit of the game, even if it’s a neat party trick.)
By "guessing" I meant "the guessing phase" as opposed to "the clueing phase", i.e. it's about the phase where you pick cards.
I should have said "picking phase", but from my example, you should have been able to see that I knew it was about memorizing the boards.
I feel like you've taken an intentionally negative reading of my comment, which I suppose fair's fair because I wasn't exactly being charitable to my parent comment either.
Basically, the claim is that based entirely on the pattern of the board (revealed red, blue, and white cards), there are so few legal board configurations (the cards that the spymasters are using), that the field operatives can ignore the hint the spymaster gave, and guess correct cards anyway based on the board's revealed information.
Effectively, a game where the red team uses this strategy might go like this:
Red Team Spymaster: Word unlimited
Red Team Field Operatives: <pick card at random, get white at the lower right>
Blue Team Spymaster: <Real Hint> 2
Blue Team Field Operatives: <pick 2 correct cards at the upper left>
Red Team Spymaster: Word unlimited
Red Team Field Operatives: "Well, there's only one spymaster card with a white card in the lower right and two blue cards in the upper left, so now we know where every card is and can pick all the red cards" <wins>
In a real practical implementation here, the spymaster would probably actually clue "<death card hint> 0" each turn in order to ensure their team can safely pick at random until there's enough information to know which board they're on.
Please point me to the rule that bans this: https://czechgames.com/files/rules/codenames-rules-en.pdf