Twenty Questions Reference Thread

We’ve been playing 20 Questions. Someone thinks of something, and everyone else guesses yes-no questions, until either someone guesses it or we run out of questions. Typically, the person who guesses the right thing starts the next game.

It was all in one enormous thread, but I’m going to break it up, and put useful references and links here.

I’m also moving some posts that answer “how are we playing this” here. Not that we can’t change, but may as well be able to see what folks were doing.

Here are the initial rules, as cited by soyleche, who started the games:

Game 1

Ok, fair enough.

So how does this work now? Do we keep this going?

Should I pick something and y’all ask me 20 questions about it?

(At least that’s how we played in my family: whomever guessed correctly was “it” in the next round… but I’m not married to that method. We could go with whomever had the most “yes” responses.)

ETA: Although “most yes responses” is a tie between John S Mill and A_Student.

I hadn’t thought that far ahead. As far as I’m concerned anyone that wants to can go next. We could even have multiple going at the same time, but that would get all sorts of confusing…

Twig asked the deciding question. she can pick the next item.

Ok, I’ve thought of something. Am I supposed to say more than that? Like soyleche said “object”… what other options besides “object” are there.

When my family played this we didn’t do that part.

I said “object” because I couldn’t think of another option. I would say that anything you would classify as a “noun” would be fair game - but you could even loosen that if you want.

I’m personally only going to consider the answers to the questions when narrowing things down - say whatever you want before the questions start, that is irrelevant (to me, at least).

You don’t have to feel beholden to my intentions. This round is all yours. :slight_smile:

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Is this your official question? Also would you rather break that question up so there isn’t the ‘or’ statement? Reference to note in very first post:

Note: There is no reason for anyone else to follow the rules I laid out in the OP if they don’t want to.

Some useful clarifications

FWIW - I’m not in love with the “different threads” idea. I think in general it is more annoying than how things were before.

Feel free to just continue the next game in the existing thread, IMO. Doesn’t bother me at any rate.

I was thinking maybe a new thread once a week or once a month or so. One thread per game feels like a lot to me. :woman_shrugging:

I already started a thread. Just wanted to state my opinion.

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If you do I’d be happy to rename the thread to something more appropriate like 20 Questions February 2021 perhaps.

Oops, posts crossed. Never mind.

Because you need to find a new thread at the end, or some other reason?

If the majority ages with you, i can put them back together.

Making a new thread is a bit annoying, but not insurmountable. Finding the new thread isn’t particularly difficult with the “Latest” feature. A bit of confusion if the new thread started and people are still talking in the old thread, but not too bad.

Looking at the Games category - it is littered with old “20 Questions” threads that make it look very cluttered. I don’t navigate the forum that way, so not a big issue, but it is kind of ugly.

Mostly, I just never understood what problem this was supposed to be fixing - and if I do sort of understand it (“difficult to find things in long thread and then get back to where the action is”), this method seems more annoying than the long thread.

I do see the point to having a “reference thread” to compile various people’s ideas on how questions should be interpreted. That’s kinda nice.

For me the hardest part of new threads is they no longer fall into my unread bucket with the number after the thread title, so I have to specifically look and find the thread again. Not a big deal, just a minor inconvenience each new thread.

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