Head-to-head comparison

Codenames vs Telestrations

Codenames is the thinking game and Telestrations is the laughing game. Both cost under $35 and both fit a holiday table; pick by the volume you want in the room.

Light weight Codenames

$24.97

2-8+ 15 min Light

Word-association party game. Plays with grandparents, college kids, anyone in between.

Buy Codenames · $24.97 →

Light weight Telestrations

$32

4-8 30 min Light

Telephone with dry erase sketchbooks. The worse your group draws, the harder everyone laughs.

Buy Telestrations · $32 →

Pick Codenames if

The table is mixed ages and you want something quiet enough for grandparents: two teams, one-word clues, a game in fifteen minutes, and it seats two to eight or more.

Pick Telestrations if

You want the loud one. Four to eight people pass dry-erase sketchbooks, the drawings get worse each round, and the laughing is the point. It needs a table everyone can reach.

The tradeoff.

Codenames

Codenames is a word-association game where two teams compete to identify their agents by interpreting one-word clues. One player per team acts as the spymaster, seeing a grid of twenty-five words and a hidden key card showing which words belong to their team. Spymasters take turns giving a single clue word plus a number, indicating how many of their team's words relate to that clue. Their teammates then point to words they think match, trying to identify all their agents before hitting an opponent's operative or the assassin, which ends the round immediately. The turn loop is simple, rapid-fire, and endlessly variable because the clue-giving drives everything.

What makes Codenames distinctive is how elegantly it transforms into a showcase for lateral thinking and shared references. The spymasters become improvisational comedians and lateral thinkers, searching for connections others might miss, while their teams become pattern-recognition detectives, debating interpretations in real time. There's genuine tension when a clue points to multiple possibilities and your teammate hesitates over which word to choose. The table fills with conversation, laughter, and occasional groans of "oh, I see it now." Unlike many light party games that feel more like charades variants, Codenames creates genuine moments of intellectual connection and creative problem-solving.

Best for: 5+ Players, Family with Kids, Holiday Gathering

Telestrations

Telestrations is the telephone game with dry erase sketchbooks. Everyone draws a word or phrase from a card, writes it in their spiral book, and passes it along. The next player has sixty seconds, timed by a sand timer, to sketch that word. The next player sees only the sketch and writes down a guess. The book keeps alternating between drawings and guesses until it returns to its owner, who then reveals the chain of destruction to the table. The eight player box includes eight erasable coiled sketchbooks, dry erase markers, cleanup cloths, and more than 1,700 words and phrases to work through.

There is a scoring system in the rulebook, and no group in history has used it past the first game. Telestrations lives on the reveal, when a simple prompt has mutated into something unrecognizable over eight passes, and it reliably produces the loudest laughs per dollar of anything in this category. Bad artists are not a liability, they are the engine: the game is funnier the worse your table draws. That makes it perfect for mixed groups, holiday gatherings with three generations at the table, and anyone who freezes up at performance style party games, since everyone plays simultaneously and nobody is ever on the spot alone.

Best for: 5+ Players, College Dorm, Holiday Gathering

These are editorial picks; publishers cannot pay to appear here. Amazon links fund the site, and if you'd rather buy local, find a store via BoardGameGeek.