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Are possessive apostrophes legal in Codenames? For example, "women's 3" for "health"

Board & Card Games Asked on October 29, 2021

So I want to say something like "women’s 3" to indicate "health" which is a card on the board. If I did just "women 3", it’s not as likely that my guesser would guess health. You often hear "women’s health" or "men’s health" magazines or websites, which is what I want to elude to with my hint.

However, when I says "women’s 3" out loud, it could either be "womans 3" "womens 3", "woman’s 3", or "women’s 3", the first two aren’t proper words you find in a dictionary, and the last two are somewhat "a word + a non-word/punctuation notation" because of the apostrophe s?

The rules say

Your clue must be about one word.

And

Don’t be too strict.

And the following which is a given, but I’d like to know the general consensus of players because the game has a lot of flexible rules, so to figure out what rules are generally accepted by most players, asking StackExchange here might be the best option.

If the opposing spymaster allows it, the clue is valid.

I suppose this is more of a subjective question since "don’t be too strict" has multiple interpretations. My thoughts are it’s not too overpowered of a clue so we shouldn’t to be too strict, but at the same it’s not a proper word or it’s a "word + a non-word/punctuation notation"?

I’ve asked another question about if contractions are allowed in Codenames, but I don’t think it’s a duplicate since even though both have apostrophes, they do differ in what rules they break. The other one might break the more than one word rule, and this one might break the invalid word rule.

One Answer

If it's one English word and it's a clue about the meaning(s) of the word(s) on the table (and it isn't a form of any words on the table, etc.), then it's a valid clue, yes. Apostrophes are not prohibited.

(Not rule to cite; it is difficult to prove a negative).

For the question of "women's" vs. "woman's", etc., you are free to spell it out so as to disambiguate the clue (and should if asked) .

You are allowed to spell out your clue.

You should spell out your clue if someone asks.

Answered by L. Scott Johnson on October 29, 2021

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