For Christmas, Santa gave me an electronic widget that plays “20 Questions.” For those of you that are not familiar with this game — you ask yes or no questions until you figure out what the other person has in mind. It’s called 20 Questions because the idea is that you have to guess what the other person is thinking of in 20 questions or fewer. If you don’t guess what they’re thinking of after asking your allotted 20 questions, they win. If you do guess what it is in 20 questions or fewer, you win. The electronic version of the game that I got from Santa (called 20 Q) bills itself as being so good that it’s spooky, but so far it has never guessed correctly. Among the things we have thought up that it has not guessed: a black lab, a regular dog, and a spoon. I think we may have thrown a celebrity in there, but it doesn’t do famous people. By the way, in case you missed that, we did say “spoon.” We tried it twice to make sure we’d answered the questions correctly, but it was still too stupid to come up with “spoon.”
At any rate, I decided to challenge Shannon to a regular game of 20 Questions (sans 20 Q) with me asking the questions. Here are the highlights:
Matt (question 1): Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?
Shannon: “Mostly Animal”
…
Matt (question 9): Is it a hot dog?
Shannon: Yes
Matt (celebrating, then realizing…): Wait, I didn’t win?
Shannon: No.
Matt (question 10:) Is hot dog one of the ingredients?
Shannon: Yes
…
Matt (question 14): Is it a chili dog or something equally ridiculous like that?
Shannon: Yes, something as equally ridiculous as that
…
Matt (question 18): Is it a chili dog from the Varsity?
Shannon: Yes
Matt (celebrating again): Take that, machine!
Matt (question 19): Shannon, did you realize you were married to the John Henry of 20 questions?
Shannon: No, no I didn’t.
I’m surprised it didn’t get spoon. I bought mine when I was playing with it in the store. I was trying to get it to guess “a boyfriend,” and it didn’t ask anything at all related. I didn’t think it was going to get anywhere close, but then it guessed “a soulmate.” I was very impressed, but later I realized it guesses soulmate for pretty much any person, including people you hate. Also, mine frequently gets confused anytime I go down an animal path. It never would have gotten a Varsity chili dog.