Twenty Questions

Set up

None. Choose one player to be the answerer. Everyone else is a questioner.

How to play

1. The answerer thinks of a person, place or thing and says which of the three it is. Traditional players say animal, vegetable or mineral instead.
2. The questioners take turns asking questions that can be answered with yes or no.
3. The answerer replies truthfully with yes, no, or “sometimes” when neither is fair.
4. Someone keeps count. A direct guess counts as a question.
5. If the questioners name it within twenty questions, the player who guessed it becomes the next answerer. If they run out, the answerer reveals it and goes again or picks a successor.

Asking better questions

Early questions should cut the field in half, not test a hunch. “Is it alive?” removes half the world in one go; “Is it a dog?” removes one thing. A good run usually goes from category, to size, to where you would find it, to what it is used for, and only then to guesses.

With children, play as one team and talk through why a question was useful. It becomes a thinking game without anyone noticing.

Ways to change it

• Ten questions: for younger children, with things in the room only.
• Teams: two teams alternate questions on the same secret. The team that names it wins the round.
• Themed: everything must come from one world, such as food on the table at Thanksgiving, or characters from books the class has read.
• Reverse: the answerer does not know the secret. Stick a name on their back and let them ask the questions. That is Who Am I?.

Who it suits, and who it doesn’t

Twenty Questions is the game for a car, a waiting line or a dinner table: no props, no moving, any number of people. It suits ages seven and up. It is too quiet to lift a party that needs energy, and it drags when the answerer picks something nobody else has heard of. Set a rule that the answer must be known to everyone playing.