Comments on: How Electronic “20 Questions” Games Work

By: Jeff

Jeff — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:43:18 +0000

I have found 2 questions it has difficulty with / didn’t exactly get:

-nothing
-cell

One thing it can’t get, even after 6 tries:

alien.

By: battery

battery — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 01:12:49 +0000

Darkstar, you are correct. If there is a risk that open encrypted volumes of interest would close on power loss, it is preferable to employ a live forensic tool and not to cut the power. Yes, that’s a very tough call for a first responder to make. Then again, LE also has the option of arresting the perp and requesting/coercing the password.

By: bas

bas — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:37:37 +0000

Glad you mentioned the Harry Potter version. I picked it up in a store one day and got so distracted I started walking into people and displays. It guessed the right character or object four out of five times, and the time it lost it was because I didn’t really know how to answer some of the questions. This toy is a definite must-have for any Harry Potter fan!

By: Karen

Karen — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:26:06 +0000

I gave these little toys to everyone I knew about 3 years ago. They are such fun, unless you get too wishy-washy on your answers.

By: Eileen

Eileen — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 12:57:12 +0000

Those things are creepy the first few times you try them.

I had my mom try the online one last night, she chose a fountain, but it never guessed mostly because she kept answering “sometimes”because she’s into very creative fountains…

By: cmk

cmk — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 03:29:18 +0000

It doesn’t work for me–the handheld one, that is. I beat it more than 80% of the time–probably 90%+. I quit playing–I got too bored.

By: gmsc

gmsc — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 03:01:42 +0000

Granted, Robin Burgener did some great work on this, especially with developing the questions on the web, but such programs were around far before 1988.

Arthur Luehrmann originally developed this basic idea back in the ’70s, with his program “Animal”. You can even find a copy of his program online at atariarchives.org, in the book “BASIC Computer Games”, which was first released in 1978.

Luehrmann’s program could learn new animals, but didn’t always require 20 questions to get to it.