20 Questions

On a just-for-the-heck-of-it trip to Short Pump Mall last night Justin and I found the most amazing game ever. It's a small handheld electronic version of the game we all know from road trips as Twenty Questions. You think of anything in the whole world, and then after you answer a series of twenty questions the game tells you what you were thinking. IT READS YOUR MIND.

Justin tried it first, while I was preoccupied playing Tetris. He thought of spaghetti. Twenty questions later ("Is it bigger than a duck?" "Can you put it in an envelope?") it told Justin exactly what he'd been thinking: "I can't believe you were thinking of... SPAGHETTI." How did it do that?

We tried a few more times, but we were stupid and picked easy things like suitcase, coffee mug (it guessed tea cup), and bed. Then we pulled out the big guns. Ninja. "Is it an animal?" Yes. "Does it have short fur?" No. "Is it dangerous?" Duh. Seventeen questions later: "Is it a NINJA?" Arghh!

At this point we decided the game must be cheating by listening to us say our thing out loud. We thought we could trick it. Covertly we decided our thing would be Bed (a stupid choice we quickly realized, way too easy), but we always said "telescope" out loud. "Is it soft?" "A telescope isn't soft!" we replied as I pressed Yes. But we had no luck. "You tried to trick me...but are you thinking of a BED?"

Seriously guys, this game is amazing. It turns out it comes from a web site, where you can play the exact same game without shelling out the twenty bucks. I just tried it using Cricket Bat, a thing Justin kept wishing we'd tried last night. At question 17 it guessed cork, at 20 it guessed pool cue, at 22 baseball bat, and finally after "Is it originally from Europe?" it said "I am guessing that it is a cricket bat?" So apparently the internet version goes beyond twenty questions when it's LOSING, but it still guessed cricket bat by question 25. Amazing.