
I’m Old, Part XLI: Trolling Creative People - douche
http://plinth.org/techtalk/?p=300
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dang
How to cheat at 20 questions: instead of picking a single thing to be the
answer, keep a set of things in mind. As you answer the yes-or-no questions,
prune the set so everything in it still satisfies all the questions. If your
set has more than one element at the end, pick an answer nobody guessed.

I thought of this when my kids were little but don't think I ever pulled it on
them.

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M_Grey
If you want to go to the quantum physics end of things, play the classic game,
with a twist. The "it" person leaves the room while everyone else decides on
the object. Instead however, they agree that no one will have any idea of what
the object actually is, and they are free to answer the questions however they
want, but with the following rule: each answer must remain consistent with all
previous answers.

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ChuckMcM
So everyone has their own object ?

I like the idea of everyone having the set of all objects and then as each
person is asked, not being allowed to contradict any other answer, until
everyone has the same object.

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M_Grey
It's even more bizarre... no one has an object at all. You essentially build
up the object from a set of properties defined by asking yes or no questions,
the answers to which must be consistent. It's actually possible that the
object will only be known when the last question is asked and answered.

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huhtenberg
This is a bastardized version of a game called Danetki (in Russian) whereby
one person tells the end of the story and other players must guess what the
whole story was by asking Yes/No questions.

E.g. - In the middle of an undisturbed snowfield lies a man. Next to him lies
a piece of cloth. What happened?

E.g. - A man wakes up in the morning, gets up from bed, looks in the mirror
and then throws himself out of the window, killing himself. Again, what
happened?

This sort of thing. An excellent way to pass some time on long train rides.
But after a while everyone runs out of stories, so someone inevitably turns to
this trolling variation and that's how the evening ends.

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M_Grey
We call them "Minute Mysteries" where I grew up in the US... I'd guess it was
brought over from Russian immigrants. I remember the ones you mentioned, along
with one about someone hanging themselves on an ice brick, another about
someone drawing a short straw on a hot air balloon, and I think one about a
runner in baseball coming in to home.

~~~
jobigoud
> someone hanging themselves on an ice brick

Spoilers! The riddle is that someone is found hung on top of a water puddle
and no chair.

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clort
We used to do a mind-reading trick like this: the magician takes somebody out
of the room and "attunes" them - ie tells them the rules, which are .. if the
magician asks if the object is something that has a specific attribute, such
as being a certain colour, then its not that thing but is the _next_ thing
that the magician will ask about. then the magician comes back to the room,
and the people there decide on an object. Beckon the mind reader back in and
the magician points to a series of objects and the mind reader gets the
correct one, every time

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wrboyce
I know this as "black magic", and the item prior to the correct item would be
black.

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bluefox
Next time, begin with this question: "Are we playing \"Decadence\"?"

~~~
chias
I admire your dedication to escaping your strings.

~~~
StavrosK
But aren't we all always looking to escape our strings? For such is the fate
of puppets.

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mkl
I've played a similar game called "Psychiatrist". Everyone sits in a circle,
and the "it" person in the centre and asks yes/no questions of each person in
turn. Their goal is to figure out the rule everyone's following, which is :
"Answer as if you are the person on your left."

Any kind of personal question becomes hilarious. What makes it hard and extra
fun is that every time someone answers wrongly, the person they're answering
for (or anyone else) yells out "psychiatrist!" and everyone switches places -
answers to the same questions change.

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dahart
This game reminds me of so many "brain teaser" questions... here are some
things that, trust me, form a pattern. Guess what I'm thinking. WRONG.

Makes me think about puzzles & video games and how it's really easy and cheap
to make something that's hard or unsolvable. It takes a lot of skill and
iteration to get something to just hard enough but achievable that it's really
fun and satisfying.

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perishabledave
Reminds me of Mao, where the rules of the game are unspoken and you have to
learn the rules by playing.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_(card_game)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_\(card_game\))

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jholman
Taking the name of Our Great Leader in vain.

Discussing the rules.

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inimino
The version of this that works for a group:

Put everyone who is playing in an order. The first three players start out in
a room and have the rules explained to them. Everyone else is forbidden to
come in this room. After the rules are explained, you call in the fourth
player, play the game, and then explain the rules and they get to participate
on the next round as the fifth player (and so on) is called in. Everybody but
the last person gets to play both sides, which makes it more fun. You can
change the rules, to mess with people who already know the game.

