How does it encourage creativity, honestly?
Because...it forces you to come up with another clue aside from the braindead obvious one, because a braindead obvious word isn't nearly as fun? We don't like it when a team gets the play/pass option on an automatic point. That isn't strategy, that's luck.
Password should be a game of skill and strategy. We'll pull out
Can't Stop if we want luck.
If there's a word where the best clue
If the "best" clue has been deemed illegal, well, it isn't the best clue anymore, is it? I mean, by that definition, the BEST clue is the word itself, as that SNL skit keeps milking.
or only clue that would lead you to the identity of the word is an opposite
I have played a lot of
Password. I mean, a LOT of
Password. We have yet to come across a Password, in all the games we have played (so we're probably talking at least a couple thousand words at the minimum, although I strongly suspect we have played a fair bit more than 100 games in the years I have been playing games with my friends) where the *only* clue we could come up with was an opposite. In fact I daresay we have never seen a Password that we could come up with only one clue for, period, and I would further posit that if such a word exists it would be crappy material to include in the game.