Codenames is a word guessing game - in part. It's also a game of ingenuity, of knowing your players / spymasters, of players trying to be better as a group than as individuals, of paying attention (and using the other team's clues) - and at some point it's a game and can be played seriously and competitively.
From that point of view I don't see a serious problem with embracing the game pieces provided and taking them into consideration. It is a dimension in the game. It does not kill the game. Solid thinking from that team.
I have more of a problem with people learning word lists for Scrabble. It's not against the rules - but it makes it hard to play with these people. It's a significant class difference.
I gotta disagree, I'm way more accepting of Scrabble list memorizers (even though I'll never be one) because word knowledge was intended by the game designers to be a part of the game.
Memorizing the spymaster layouts was almost certainly not intended by the designers of Codenames. Probably someone realized it was possible, but as other commenters mention the increased friction of fully randomized layouts isn't worth it when almost no one will want to do this.
> word knowledge was intended by the game designers to be a part of the game
This is the most frustrating part of Scrabble to me. I consider my vocabulary to be pretty good. But frequently when I try to use an even slightly-esoteric word in scrabble, it turns out to not be in the official dictionary. And conversely, the official dictionary is full of words I've never heard or seen used by real people and often has some definition like "18th century slang for <word>". I then lose to people who know all these weird words (especially the very short ones, which they've memorized) and who admit they have never heard these words outside a scrabble context either.
In short, the English the players speak and the English defined by the official dictionary are different enough languages that it seems only useful as a way to learn "Scrabble English" and not modern English.
Yes, I agree the official Scrabble word lists are arbitrary and sometimes downright inexplicable. But assuming you're not trying to win official competitions, you can play with any dictionary you like.
Memorizing the layouts altogether would be a step too far. And probably some people could do it...
I was thinking more of remembering that the layouts have basic characteristics: a team's words are not bunched on one side, or all lined up, or in a circle, etc. Not your team's, not the other team's.
But now that you mention it, fully randomized would be easy to do as a phone app. And a phone could be propped up in front of the spymasters. (The setup with the layout propped in front of the spymasters works really well in a party setting, where it's normal that some people will get up and walk around without wanting to cheat.)
From that point of view I don't see a serious problem with embracing the game pieces provided and taking them into consideration. It is a dimension in the game. It does not kill the game. Solid thinking from that team.
I have more of a problem with people learning word lists for Scrabble. It's not against the rules - but it makes it hard to play with these people. It's a significant class difference.