Hunch hound

How to play Hunch hound

Think of anything at all and keep it in your head: an animal, a snack, a job, a place, the thing on your desk. Press the button and the hound starts asking yes or no questions, each one chosen to cut the field down as fast as possible. Answer with yes, probably, not sure, probably not or no. Yes and no rule things out for good, the soft answers only nudge, which is handy for the awkward cases, and not sure simply moves it on. Misclicked? Back undoes your last answer. When the hound has a hunch it stops and asks straight out. Tell it whether it got you. Miss, and it crosses that one off and keeps asking. Was the guess close? Say so, and it sniffs around things like it. If it still has not got you after the twentieth question you win, and it will ask you what you were thinking of so it knows next time.

Tips

• Answer for the typical version of the thing, not the one weird exception you once saw
• Use probably and probably not for the awkward ones, they nudge instead of ruling out
• Watch the little thoughts under the hound, it repeats what your last answer told it
• Stumped it? Teach it. It remembers on this device and will get you next time
• Play it out loud with someone else, arguing over an answer is half the fun

About Hunch hound

Twenty questions is an old parlour game that survives because of the maths behind it. Every good yes or no question splits the remaining options roughly in half, so twenty of them can theoretically pin down one thing out of a million. In practice, people ask lazy questions and the game runs long. Hunch hound does not: it weighs everything it knows against every answer you give and always asks the question that cuts deepest, which is why it can feel a bit smug when it lands your answer in nine. A wrong guess does not end the round either: it crosses the guess off, keeps every answer you gave and plays on until all twenty questions are used. Losing to it once usually makes you want to find something obscure enough to beat it, and when you do, it asks you to teach it.

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