Codenames — Typst edition

Generate a printable Codenames board (player card + solution card) from a word list — no install, no terminal, just edit and export.

Quick start (no install)

1. Open typst.app, click Start from template, and search for codenames.
2. You'll get a working board immediately, rendered from example words.
3. Edit the words list and the settings at the top of the file to your own game.
4. Export as PDF.

Quick start (local CLI)

typst init @preview/codenames
cd codenames
typst compile main.typ game.pdf

Then edit main.typ and recompile whenever you change something (typst watch main.typ recompiles live as you save).

Settings reference (codenames-board)

All of these are plain variables at the top of main.typ:

Setting	Default	Description
words	—	Array of at least grid-size × grid-size words
seed	42	Any whole number — change it to get a different board
grid-size	5	5 for a 5×5 grid, 4 for 4×4, etc.
n-blue	10	Number of blue (team) words
n-assassin	1	Number of assassin (instant-loss) words
shuffle-positions	true	false keeps words in the order you typed them
title	"CODENAMES"	Player card title — "" hides it
print-friendly	false	true for a black & white, ink-saving version

Neutral cards fill the remaining slots automatically (grid-size² − n-blue − n-assassin).

There's no "randomize on every compile" button — Typst deliberately exposes no clock or entropy source finer than the calendar date to keep compiles reproducible, so the only way to get a new board is to change seed to a different number yourself.

Cover cards

A second function, cover-cards, generates double-sided cut-out cover cards that fit over the word cards (e.g. to add a logo or team color to the back of each card):

#import "@preview/codenames:0.1.0": cover-cards

#show: cover-cards.with(
  color1: "blue",             // front color — a name (see below) or a hex code like "#1a5fa8"
  color2: "tan",               // back color
  label: "TEAM",               // optional text printed on every card
  logo: image("logo.png", fit: "contain"),  // optional image — must be built with `image(...)` yourself,
                                              // so it resolves relative to *your* file
  title: "Cover Cards",         // optional page title
  grid-size: 5,
)

Named colors: blue, darkblue, red, darkred, green, tan, beige, black, white, gray, yellow, orange, purple.

License

MIT-0 — use, modify, and print freely.