Twenty questions is aspokenparlor game which encouragesdeductive reasoning andcreativity. It originated in the United States by Maggie Noonan and was played widely in the 19th century.[1] It escalated in popularity during the late 1940s, when it became the format for a successful weekly radio quiz program.[citation needed]
In the traditional game, the "answerer" chooses something that the other players, the "questioners", must guess. They take turns asking a question which the answerer must answer with"yes" or "no". In variants of the game, answers such as "maybe" are allowed. Sample questions could be: "Is it bigger than a breadbox?", "Is it alive?", and finally "Is it this pen?".Lying is not allowed. If a questioner guesses the correct answer, they win and become the answerer for the next round. If 20 questions are asked without a correct guess, then the answerer has stumped the questioners and gets to be the answerer for another round.
Careful selection of questions can greatly improve the odds of the questioner winning the game. For example, a question such as "Does it involve technology for communications, entertainment, or work?" can allow the questioner to cover a broad range of areas using a single question that can be answered with a simple "yes" or "no", significantly narrowing down the possibilities.
A variant is called "animal, vegetable, or mineral". This is taken from theLinnaean taxonomy of the natural world. In this version, the answerer tells the questioners at the start of the game whether the subject belongs to the animal, vegetable or mineralkingdom. These categories can produce odd technicalities, such as a wooden table being classified as a vegetable (since wood comes from trees), or a belt being both animal (if leather) or vegetable (if cloth), and mineral (if it has a metal or plastic buckle). Another variant is "person, place, or thing".
Other versions specify that the item to be guessed should be in a given category, such as actions, occupations, famous people, etc. In Hungary a similar game is named afterSimon bar Kokhba. A version of twenty questions called "yes and no" is played as a parlor game by characters inCharles Dickens'A Christmas Carol.
The abstractmathematical version of the game where some answers may be wrong is sometimes calledUlam's game or theRényi–Ulam game. The game suggests that the information (as measured byShannon'sentropy statistic) required to identify an arbitrary object is at most 20bits. The game is often used as an example when teaching people aboutinformation theory. Mathematically, if each question is structured to eliminate half the objects, 20 questions allow the questioner to distinguish between 220 =1048576 objects. Accordingly, the most effective strategy for twenty questions is to ask questions that will split the field of remaining possibilities roughly in half each time. The process is analogous to abinary search algorithm incomputer science orsuccessive-approximation ADC in analog-to-digital signal conversion.
In 1901Charles Sanders Peirce discussed factors in the economy of research that govern the selection of a hypothesis for trial: (1) cheapness, (2) intrinsic value (instinctive naturalness and reasoned likelihood), and (3) relation (caution, breadth, and incomplexity) to other projects (other hypotheses and inquiries). He discussed the potential of twenty questions to single one subject out from among 220 and, pointing to skilful caution, said:
Thus twenty skilful hypotheses will ascertain what two hundred thousand stupid ones might fail to do. The secret of the business lies in the caution which breaks a hypothesis up into its smallest logical components, and only risks one of them at a time.
He elaborated on how, if that principle had been followed in the investigation of light, its investigators would have saved themselves half a century of work.[2] Testing the smallest logical components of a hypothesis one at a time does not mean asking about, say,1048576 subjects one at a time, but extracting aspects of a guess or hypothesis, and asking, for example, "Did an animal do this?" before asking "Did a horse do this?".
That aspect ofscientific method resembles also asituation puzzle in facing (unlike twenty questions) a puzzling scenario at the start. Both games involve asking yes/no questions, but Twenty Questions places a greater premium on efficiency of questioning. A limit on their likeness to the scientific process of trying hypotheses is that a hypothesis, because of its scope, can be harder to test for truth (test for a "yes") than to test forfalsity (test for a "no") or vice versa.
In developing theparticipatory anthropic principle (PAP), which is aninterpretation of quantum mechanics, theoretical physicistJohn Archibald Wheeler used a variant on twenty questions, calledsurprise twenty questions,[3] to show how the questions we choose to ask about the universe may dictate the answers we get. In this variant, the respondent does not choose or decide upon any particular or definite object beforehand, but only on a pattern of "yes" or "no" answers. This variant requires the respondent to provide a consistent set of answers to successive questions, so that each answer can be viewed as logically compatible with all the previous answers. In this way, successive questions narrow the options until the questioner settles upon a definite object. Wheeler's theory was that, in an analogous manner, consciousness may play some role in bringing the universe into existence.[4]
In the 1940s, the game became a popular radio panel quiz show,Twenty Questions, first broadcast at 8 pm, Saturday, February 2, 1946, on theMutual Broadcasting System from New York'sLongacre Theatre on West 48th Street. Radio listeners sent in subjects for the panelists to guess in twenty questions;Winston Churchill's cigar was the subject most frequently submitted. On the early shows, listeners who stumped the panel won a lifetime subscription toPageant. From 1946 to 1951, the program was sponsored byRonsonlighters. In 1952–1953,Wildroot Cream-Oil was the sponsor.[5]
As a television series,Twenty Questions debuted as a local show in New York onWOR-TV Channel 9 on November 2, 1949. Beginning on November 26, the series went nationwide onNBC until December 24, after which it remained dormant until March 17, 1950, when it was picked up byABC until June 29, 1951.[citation needed] Some of the early TV episodes were simulcast on WOR-TV, WNBT-TV and Mutual radio.[6]
Its longest and best-known run, however, is the one on theDuMont Television Network from July 6, 1951, to May 30, 1954. During this time, original hostBill Slater was replaced by Jay Jackson. After this run ended, ABC picked up the series once again from July 6, 1954, to May 3, 1955. The last radio show had been broadcast on March 27, 1954.
Twenty Questions aired locally onCJAY-TV in Winnipeg, Canada from March to June, 1961 and then on the newCTV network beginning in September, 1961; its host, Stewart Macpherson, went on to become the original host of the UK version.
In Hungary, the game is known asBarkochba, named afterSimon bar Kokhba, the leader of the second-century Jewish uprising against the Romans. The story goes that the Romans cut out a spy's tongue, so when he reached bar Kokhba's camp, he was only able to nod or shake his head to answer bar Kokhba's questions. The number of questions is not limited to twenty.
Barkochba was played by Frigyes Karinthy and his company in Budapest back in 1911. So the game started in Hungary from the New York café in Budapest.
Barkochba was staged as a television game showKicsoda-Micsoda? (later renamedVan Benne Valami) on the Hungarian national televisionMagyar Televízió from 1975 to 1991. It was the first show presented byIstván Vágó, who would later host the Hungarian versions ofJeopardy! (Mindent vagy semmit!) andWho Wants to Be a Millionaire? (Legyen Ön is milliomos!).
A bi-lingual (Irish/English) version of Twenty Questions aired onRTE Radio 1 in the 1960s and 1970s. It was hosted byGearóid Ó Tighearnaigh, written by Dick O'Donovan and produced by Bill O'Donovan (occasional panelist) and included Dominic O’Riordan, Tony Ó Dálaigh, Seán Ó Murchú and Máire Noone on the panel. It proved enormously popular, travelling the length and breadth of Ireland, hosted in local clubs and community halls.
NRK aired its own version continuously from 1947 to the early 1980s. In 2004, the radio series was revived and regained its popularity, leading to a 2006 TV version. The Norwegian20 spørsmål continues on NRK radio and TV, and a web-based game is available atthe official NRK website. A 2006 board game based on the series is currently the prize sent to listeners who beat the panel.[7]
Polish version,20 pytań was shown inTVP1 in 1960s, hosts were Ryszard Serafinowicz and Joanna Rostocka. In Polish version there were three 3-player teams: mathematicians, journalists and mixed team fromŁódź. Show was cancelled due to scandal, when it turned out that mathematicians usedbinary search algorithm to answer the questions,[8] using to itWielka Encyklopedia Powszechna PWN.
TheBBC aired a version on radio from 28 February 1947 to 1976 with TV specials airing in 1947 and 1948 plus a series from 1956 to 1957. On radio, the subject to be guessed was revealed to the audience by a "mystery voice" (originallyNorman Hackforth from 1947 to 1962; he was later a regular panelist).[9] Hackforth became well known amongst the British public as much for his aloofness as his apparent knowledgeability.
The series was originally presented byStewart MacPherson. The panel comprisedRichard Dimbleby,Jack Train,Anona Winn andJoy Adamson, in later years comedianPeter Glaze also. A later presenter,Gilbert Harding, was ousted in 1960 by producerIan Messiter when, after having drunk a triple gin-and-tonic he had originally offered to Messiter, proceeded to completely ruin the night's game – he insulted two panelists, failed to recognise a correct identification after seven questions (after revealing the answer upon the 20th question, he yelled at the panel and audience), and ended the show three minutes early by saying "I'm fed up with this idiotic game ... I'm going home".[10] He was replaced byKenneth Horne until 1967, followed byDavid Franklin from 1970 to 1972.
A revival ran for one season in the 1990s onBBC Radio 4, hosted byJeremy Beadle. A version with a rival line-up,[11] produced by commercial stationRadio Luxembourg, is not acknowledged by the BBC.[9] Another revival, under the titleGuess What?, was hosted byBarry Took for a single series in 1998.[12]
A televised version ran from 1960 to 1961, produced byAssociated-Rediffusion forITV and hosted byPeter Jones (who later hosted in 1974). The "mystery voice" later became a running gag on the radio seriesI'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue.
TheBBC World Service also broadcast a version calledAnimal, Vegetable and Mineral, chaired byTerry Wogan with a panel includingRachael Heyhoe Flint andMichael Flanders.[citation needed]
In the movieThe 20 Questions Murder Mystery (1950) then members of the team, including Richard Dimbleby and Norman Hackforth, appear. Together with two newspaper reporters, they work to find the identity of a serial killer who sends in questions for the panel that prefigure his next victim.
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