The Game of Twenty Questions
Twenty Questions is a guessing simple game in which people try to identify a person or object in 20 questions or less. To solve the guessing , the group must practice active listening skills, critical thinking, and effective interaction between people to agree on the best questions to ask as the game progresses.
There are no preparations or special materials required to play. This game works best with a small groups.
To start, you can to choose any person, place, or thing. The person can be living (e.g. a current athlete or classmate), deceased (e.g. a famous person in history), or fictitious (e.g. cartoon or movie character). The place can be anywhere in the world, including creative places. The thing can be an inanimate object, an animal, a food, etc.
Basically anything can be chosen, but try to make the selected item something that can be reasonably guessed. It’s no fun to play a guessing game that is impossible to solve!
The group take turns and ask “yes” or “no” questions in an attempt to figure out what the chosen answer is. That is, the questions must be answered with simply “Yes” or “No.”
Once the 20 questions are used up, people cannot ask any more questions and must risk answering. If the group is excited, they can do another round of guessing.
Moment of Reflection
- What feelings did you or the group experience during the activity? Why?
- Did you or the group make any assumptions? Provide an example.
- How easy was it to identify and/or dismantle these assumptions?
- How did the group agree on the questions to ask? Did they have to resort to different types of argumentation?
The topics of this publication: teamwork, motivation, interactions, active listening, imagination, critical thinking, argumentation, debate, discussion, collaboration, cooperation
