Animal, Vegetable, Mineral - Portable?

Thanks to GameGossip for reprinting a press release announcing Radica's forthcoming portable electronic game called 20Q, licensed from the 20Q.net website. The game seeks to guess an object you're thinking of by asking you 20 questions, starting with "Is it classified as Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Other or Unknown?" The site is billed as "The neural-net on the Internet", and since it's claimed that "20Q.net is a learning system; the more it is played, the smarter it gets", it'll be interesting to see if Radica's portable version tries to incorporate any learning attributes.

Comments

Re:Oldest game ever!

[Anonymous Coward]

So far, these plans have all foundered on disagreement between reasonable men over what the boundaries and connections between concepts "really" are

Well, 20 Questions usually founders like this:

Is it animal, vegetable or mineral?

Animal.

Is it taller than my Mum?

No.

Sqyugrhnuevuievio?

Yes.

HA HA THIS GAME SUCKS?

No.

Is it a peepee?

No.

What was it?

U R DUM.

Please input a question that would distinguish a peepee from a U R DUM:

0wned.

It's really good

[DarkGreenNight]

After the initial training period it allways guesses what I'm thinking about at the first try!

Are you thinking about Angelina Jolie?

Damn! Here it goes again!

No, I haven't RTFA

I'm not sure how...

[presearch]

but it needs a tie-in with Google.

Re:Oldest game ever!

[iocat]

And of course, if you stump it, you get to add a discriminating question. It's very easy to make up questions that while technically true, don't help the learning aspect. (Think "Is it a turnip?" with the answer "no" for the animal "camel".)