One rule question: why is there a "mistake track", shouldn't the time track be enough? And why the rule to tick an additonal time box, if no mistake boxes remain? I also own the boardgame and I read the rules as follows: if you pass, turn over a time token. if you guess wrong, put a time token on a word tile. -> in both cases 1 turn token is spent.
In the original game, you can play different missions (difficulty levels) that simply tell you how many turns and mistakes you are allowed to make. The less turns allowed, and the less mistakes allowed, the more challenging the game.
While the scripts can be used to print out books with different numbers of these, players could also simply agree how many turns and mistakes they are allowed for a given game.
But I decided to add something, by introducing a scoring mechanism. In this way, you are penalized in your score for making more mistakes.
The new score instructions from the intro.html page say:
Scoring: +2 points per target found, +10 per unused turn, -5 per mistake, -10 if sudden death. Games ended by a black word score differently: -10 points for each unused turn, mistake, and unfound target. Penalize illegal clues by ticking an extra turn and mistake checkbox.
The scoring is the one way the paper version "differs" from the original box. (That and I obviously removed a lot of explanation in order to get the rules to fit on one page, so players will have to figure out some details).
So turn track and mistake track are important to help you calculate your score. IF you care about score.. For most of us just winning and losing is fine.
Personally I find the paper version significantly more enjoyable and practical, and the scoring adds a fun way to compare your score against other couples and to strive for a high score.
It also lets you compute a score even if you "lose" -- though it will be bad and can easily go negative
ps. The python scripts support lots of options for creating games with different numbers of words, turns, allowed mistakes, number of each color, etc. So if codenames is too easy/hard for you you could experiment with alternative games.
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