Twenty questions

Twenty Questions is a popular spoken parlour game for two or more players. It encourages deductive reasoning and creativity.

Rules

One player is chosen to be the answerer. That person chooses an object in mind, but does not tell the other players what the object is. All other players are questioners. They each take turns asking a question which can be answered with a simple Yes or No. In variants of the game (see below) multiple state answers may be included such as the answer Maybe.) The answerer answers each question in turn. Sample questions could be "Is it in this room?" or "Is it bigger than a breadbox?" Lying is not allowed, as it would ruin the game. If a questioner guesses the object, that questioner wins and becomes the answerer for the next round. If twenty questions are asked without a correct guess, then the answerer has stumped the questioners and gets to be the answerer for another round.

Popular variants

The most popular variant is called "Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Other". In this version, the answerer tells the questioners at the start of the game whether the object is an animal, vegetable, mineral, or other. The game defines an animal as a member of the animal kingdom, a vegetable as a member of the plant kingdom, a mineral as anything geological, and other as anything else. This can produce some odd technicalities, such as a wooden table being classified as a vegetable (since wood comes from trees).

Other versions specify that the thing to be guessed should be in a given category, such as actions, occupations, famous people, etc.

Trivia

• The game was turned into a popular radio game show in 1946 on the Mutual Radio Network. It was first broadcast at 8 p.m., EST, Saturday, February 2, 1946, on the Mutual Broadcasting System. It originated from the Longacre Theatre on West 48th Street in New York.

As a television program, Twenty Questions first appeared on WOR-TV, Channel 9, November 2, 1949. The program later appeared nationwide on the DuMont Television Network and finally on the ABC Television Network. It was a panel quiz show. Radio listeners sent in subjects for the panel to guess in 20 questions (Churchill's cigar was the one most frequently submitted). The panel consisted of the owners of the show, Fred and Florence VanDeventer of Princeton, NJ. Florence used her maiden name, Rinard, on the show. VanDevenyter was a radio newscaster with the highest rated news show in New Yorkl. Their son, Robert, known on the show as Bobby McGuire, and movie and radio producer Herb Polesie comprised the regular panel. Joining them each week was a guest celebrity. The emcee was sportscaster, Bill Slater. He answered the queries the panel asked in order to identify the subject. The last radio show was broadcast in March 1954 and the last television program in May 1955. The owners sold the rights to the game to several other countries, including the BBC in the late 1940s. The object to be guessed was revealed to the audience by a "mystery voice". This format was briefly used again on Radio 4 in the 1990s but only lasted one series. A TV version was also made by Associated-Rediffusion in the early 1960s. The "mystery voice" used on the original radio series gave rise to a running joke on the radio series I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue.

• A version of Twenty Questions is played as a parlor game by characters of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

• In a Family Guy episode, (the one where Lois gets fat), Stewie plays Twenty Questions with his rival half-brother.

• In the Disney movie A Goofy Movie, Goofy plays Twenty Questions with his son Max on their road trip to Lake Destiny, Idaho.

• The game suggests that the information (as measured by Shannon's entropy statistic) required to identify an arbitrary object is about 20 bits. The game is often used as an example when teaching people about information theory. Mathematically, if each question is structured to eliminate half the objects, twenty questions will allow the questioner to distinguish between 2²⁰ or 1,048,576 objects. Accordingly, the most effective strategy for Twenty Questions is to ask questions that will split the field of remaining possibilities roughly in half each time. The process is analogous to a binary search algorithm in computer science.

• In Hungary, a similar game is named after Simon bar Kokhba (see article)

See also

• Optimal Classification
• 20Q
• The Bar Kokhba game

External links

• 20Q.net - Play 20 Questions against the computer with this artificial intelligence version of Twenty Questions. "Everything that it knows and all questions that it asks were entered by people playing the ."

• Barelybad Web Site - More detailed rules of the game.

• One: the movie - Carefully chosen 20 "ultimate" questions brought to life on film. (Is the correct guess "one"?) The movie is hundreds of interviews in search of the meaning of life, equipped with a video camera and 20 questions -- brought to the world by independent film-makers Ward Powers and friends.

• Zoo Keeper: The animal guessing game - Version of 20 questions restricted to animals.