As promised on Twitter (follow me, on second thought... don't, I'm boring) I will go way too in depth on the family room classic, Guess Who. Here we go.
I should probably get the board out for reference..
So for you monkeys who have not played this wondrous game, I shall explain the premise.
You start by each selecting a card with a character's face on it. That face is somewhere on a flipy-board thing each player has, which consists of 23 other faces. The object of the game is to guess your opponent's mystery person by asking yes-or-no elimination questions. Based on the answer you get, you knock down the characters that don't fit the description.
So you could ask random questions, but there definitely is a strategy to ask particular questions to eliminate the most people. Some may call this cheating.. it's not. I checked.
Normal questions would include something like, "Is your person's hair white?" or "Is your person female?". Now by design, each major physical trait such as hair colour, glasses, eye colour, facial hair, etc. all will have 5 people fall under that trait. This limits your ability to knock down too many people at once. However, you could also ask questions that apply to a wider range or narrower range of people on the board. For example, if you ask "is your person male?", and it is, you only get to knock down the females. This is a disadvantage since males outnumber females 3:1. If the character is a female though, you knock down the majority of the field and therefore have a huge advantage off the bat. Or, by asking if the person has a feather on their hat, which applies to only one person, you risk a lot, since the probability of your opponent having George is pretty low (1/24). If your opponent does have George, you're a lucky bastard.
To ask better questions, you should ask multi-questions to which the answer is still only yes or no. For example, "Does your person have a hat or facial hair", therefore eliminating 2 physical traits instead of only hats or facial hair and getting down to their character before they get down to yours.
You should aim to pick questions that apply to half the remaining people on the board. Your question loses the optimal knock-down number if it applies to greater than or less than half. So try it out next time! It'll work great until your opponent catches on and starts copying your strategy, then maybe it's time to switch games.
Happy Guess-Who-ing!
I should probably get the board out for reference..
So for you monkeys who have not played this wondrous game, I shall explain the premise.
You start by each selecting a card with a character's face on it. That face is somewhere on a flipy-board thing each player has, which consists of 23 other faces. The object of the game is to guess your opponent's mystery person by asking yes-or-no elimination questions. Based on the answer you get, you knock down the characters that don't fit the description.
So you could ask random questions, but there definitely is a strategy to ask particular questions to eliminate the most people. Some may call this cheating.. it's not. I checked.
Normal questions would include something like, "Is your person's hair white?" or "Is your person female?". Now by design, each major physical trait such as hair colour, glasses, eye colour, facial hair, etc. all will have 5 people fall under that trait. This limits your ability to knock down too many people at once. However, you could also ask questions that apply to a wider range or narrower range of people on the board. For example, if you ask "is your person male?", and it is, you only get to knock down the females. This is a disadvantage since males outnumber females 3:1. If the character is a female though, you knock down the majority of the field and therefore have a huge advantage off the bat. Or, by asking if the person has a feather on their hat, which applies to only one person, you risk a lot, since the probability of your opponent having George is pretty low (1/24). If your opponent does have George, you're a lucky bastard.
To ask better questions, you should ask multi-questions to which the answer is still only yes or no. For example, "Does your person have a hat or facial hair", therefore eliminating 2 physical traits instead of only hats or facial hair and getting down to their character before they get down to yours.
You should aim to pick questions that apply to half the remaining people on the board. Your question loses the optimal knock-down number if it applies to greater than or less than half. So try it out next time! It'll work great until your opponent catches on and starts copying your strategy, then maybe it's time to switch games.
Happy Guess-Who-ing!
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