20 Questions

We have a new favorite game in the Hamilton household. It is called 20 questions. My guess is that most of you have played this game, or something similar to it when you were younger. The difference on this game is that only one person plays it. The person (or in this case object) guessing is a computer.Here is a picture of what the hand held version looks like. We first heard of this game from my aunt. She bought one for my uncle because she thought it would be something amusing for him to pass the time with since he couldn't get around much. They played it at his house and she liked it so much that she bought another one for her grandson.

We acquired ours Wednesday night while looking for a birthday present for Molly. Jake was so excited about it that he wanted to play it in "secret" when we were at dinner so that she didn't see. (We got her one as well as one for ourselves) I, however, didn't think that was such a good idea because I was afraid someone would ask him what it was and then she would hear them talking about it or see it. SOO... I, being the mean wife that I am, made him wait until after she opened hers to play with it.

It was like making a kid wait until after breakfast to open their Christmas presents. He couldn't eat fast enough and as SOON as we were done, I'm talking before the plates were even all cleared he was hounding her to open her presents. Once she did, she seemed to like the game and both of them played several rounds.

We have discovered that it is easy to fool the game if you think outside of the box. For instance, if it asks you, "Do you give it as a gift?" and you are thinking of a pizza. You could say yes, or sometimes, but in it's programming the answer to that question is no. So if you don't answer along the most of the time lines then it does not have as high of a success rate.

Just today I discovered an on-line version of this game. I like this version because it continually learns. With the hand held version if it gets it wrong after 20 questions it asks 5 more. If it still doesn't know it just gives up. The on-line version will ask about the same number of questions but it will guess 4 or 5 times and then in the end if it still doesn't get it right it gives you a list to choose from or a box to enter in what you were thinking of. Once it gets to your answer it will give you a list of items that you answered that it would have answered differently. I think I may have found my new favorite lunch past time.