20 Questions Game: Rules, Smart Questions and 50 Ideas
Twenty Questions is the classic yes-or-no guessing game. One player thinks of something, and everyone else has up to twenty questions to guess what it is. The only answers allowed are "yes" and "no". It needs nothing but a little imagination, so it works in the car, in the classroom, at the dinner table or on a video call. Here are the rules, the smartest way to ask, 50 things to choose, and where the game came from.
How to Play Twenty Questions
- One player (the answerer) secretly thinks of a person, animal, place or object.
- The others (the questioners) take turns asking questions that can be answered with yes or no.
- The answerer must answer truthfully: "yes", "no", or "sometimes" / "I don't know" if your group allows it.
- Someone keeps count. Every question counts, including wrong guesses like "Is it a cat?"
- If a questioner guesses the answer within twenty questions, they win and think of the next thing. If nobody does, the answerer wins and reveals it.
Not sure who should start? Let the Random Name Picker choose, or press the Yes or No Button for each player until someone gets a yes.
Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?
The traditional first question is "Is it animal, vegetable or mineral?" It is the one question that is not yes-or-no. Animal means any living creature or something made from one (a leather shoe counts). Vegetable means plants and things made from plants, like paper or a wooden chair. Mineral covers everything else: rocks, metal, glass, plastic. Many groups skip it and start with "Is it alive?" instead.
The Smart Way to Ask: Cut the Options in Half
A good question splits what is left into two roughly equal groups. "Is it bigger than a shoebox?" rules out about half of all objects whatever the answer is. "Is it a giraffe?" rules out almost nothing when the answer is no, which it usually will be.
This is why twenty questions is more than it sounds. If every answer halves the possibilities, twenty answers can pick out one thing among 220 = 1,048,576. That is over a million options, more than the number of words in any dictionary. Each yes-or-no answer is one "bit" of information, the same unit computers use. In practice nobody splits perfectly, but the idea still wins games.
Good Opening Questions
- Is it alive (or was it ever alive)?
- Is it bigger than a loaf of bread?
- Would I find it inside a house?
- Can you eat it?
- Is it a real person?
- Is it man-made?
- Does it use electricity?
- Have I seen one today?
Save specific guesses until the end. Once you have narrowed it down to something like "a farm animal smaller than a sheep", then start naming things.
50 Things to Think Of
Easy (for Kids)
- Banana
- Elephant
- Toothbrush
- The Moon
- A school bus
- Pizza
- A penguin
- Your teacher
- A football
- Ice cream
- A rainbow
- A spider
- Birthday cake
- A pencil
- A dinosaur
Medium (for the Classroom)
- A volcano
- The Eiffel Tower
- A microscope
- The heart
- A pyramid
- Water
- A compass
- A cactus
- The Sun
- A library
- An octopus
- A calculator
- A castle
- The Amazon river
- A thermometer
Hard (for Adults)
- A paperclip
- Wi-Fi
- The colour purple
- A shadow
- A tax return
- Gravity
- A traffic cone
- An echo
- A lighthouse keeper
- Bubble wrap
- The Mona Lisa
- A sneeze
- The internet
- A parking ticket
- Your own reflection
Famous People and Characters
- Albert Einstein
- Cleopatra
- Santa Claus
- Harry Potter
- Leonardo da Vinci
Variations
- Classroom review: the teacher picks a word from the current topic (a planet, a historical figure, an element) and the class asks questions in turn. See more classroom games.
- Who Am I?: each player wears a sticky note with a famous name they cannot see and asks the group yes-or-no questions to work out who they are.
- Team play: two teams take turns asking. The team that guesses first scores a point.
- Ten Questions: a faster, harder round for experienced players.
- Car version: limit the answer to things you can see out of the window.
A Short History of Twenty Questions
Guessing games like this were popular parlour games in the 1800s. In Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843), Scrooge's nephew Fred leads a game called "Yes and No" at his Christmas party: he thinks of an animal and the guests may only ask questions he answers with yes or no. The answer turns out to be Uncle Scrooge.
The game reached a huge audience on radio. Twenty Questions started as a US radio show in 1946 and the BBC launched its own version the following year, where the panel was told whether the mystery object was animal, vegetable or mineral. Later the game moved into toys: the handheld 20Q, released in the 2000s, guessed what you were thinking using a program trained on millions of games played online.
More Yes or No Fun
If you love yes-or-no games, try our list of yes or no questions, ask the Magic 8 Ball something you really want to know, or let the Yes or No Button decide for you.
FAQ
What are the rules of 20 Questions?
One player thinks of something. The other players ask up to twenty questions that can only be answered yes or no. If they guess the answer within twenty questions they win; otherwise the player who chose the answer wins.
What is a good first question in 20 Questions?
Ask something that splits the options roughly in half, such as "Is it alive?" or "Is it bigger than a loaf of bread?". The traditional first question is "Is it animal, vegetable or mineral?"
What does animal, vegetable, mineral mean?
Animal means living creatures or things made from them, vegetable means plants or things made from plants such as paper and wood, and mineral means everything else, like rock, metal, glass and plastic.
How many things can 20 yes or no questions identify?
If every answer cuts the possibilities exactly in half, twenty questions can single out one thing among 1,048,576, which is 2 to the power of 20.
Is 20 Questions good for kids and classrooms?
Yes. It builds logical thinking and vocabulary, needs no equipment, and teachers can limit the answers to the current topic, such as animals, countries or planets.