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Twenty Questions was a popular radio and television quiz series based on the spoken parlor game which encourages deductive reasoning and creativity.

One player is chosen to be the answerer. That person chooses a subject but does not reveal this to the others. All other players are questioners. They each take turns asking a question which can be answered with a simple "Yes" or "No." In variants of the game (see below), multiple state answers may be included such as the answer "Maybe." The answerer answers each question in turn. Sample questions could be: "Is it in this room?" or "Is it bigger than a breadbox?" Lying is not allowed, as it would ruin the game. If a questioner guesses the correct answer, that questioner wins and becomes 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.

Contents 1 Popular variants 2 Computers and 20 Questions 3 Radio and television 4 References 5 See also 6 Listen to 7 External links

The most popular variant is called "Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Other". This is taken from the "Major-General's Song," a piece from the Gilbert and Sullivan opera The Pirates of Penzance.

"I am the very model of a modern Major-General, I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral, I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical"

In this version, the answerer tells the questioners at the start of the game whether the subject is an animal, vegetable, mineral or other. The game defines an animal as a member of the animal kingdom, a vegetable as a member of the plant kingdom, a mineral as anything geological, and other as anything else. This can produce odd technicalities, such as a wooden table being classified as a vegetable (since wood comes from trees). 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 after Simon bar Kokhba. A version of Twenty Questions called Yes and No is played as a parlor game by characters of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

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In the early 1980s, a computer program (source unknown) appeared labeled "20 Questions." When first executed, it printed something like, "Let's play 20 questions. I am thinking of something. Enter your questions, and I will answer yes, no or maybe." The program was about 20-30 lines of BASIC, and answers were determined by the last letter in the question. A vowel equaled "yes", a consonant "no" and "y" gave "maybe". The program is easily confused by using nonsense (for example, "Is it a gr$#%le?" will give a yes). The results confounded people as much as the earlier ELIZA program, and it was similarly thought by some to be an exceptional example of artificial intelligence.

The game suggests that the information (as measured by Shannon's entropy statistic) required to identify an arbitrary object is about 20 bits. The game is often used as an example when teaching people about information theory. Mathematically, if each question is structured to eliminate half the objects, 20 questions will allow the questioner to distinguish between 2²⁰ or 1,048,576 subjects. 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 a binary search algorithm in computer science.

In the 1940s the game became a popular radio panel quiz show, first broadcast at 8pm EST, Saturday, February 2, 1946, on the Mutual Broadcasting System from the Longacre Theatre on West 48th Street in Manhattan. Radio listeners sent in subjects for the panelists to guess in 20 questions; Winston Churchill's cigar was the subject most frequently submitted. On the early shows, listeners who stumped the panel won a lifetime subscription to Pageant. From 1946 to 1951, the program was sponsored by Ronson Lighters. In 1952-53, Wildroot Cream Oil was the sponsor.

The show was the creation of Fred Van Deventer, who was born December 5, 1903 in Tipton, Indiana, and died December 2, 1971. Van Deventer was a WOR Radio newscaster with New York's highest-rated news show, Van Deventer and the News. Van Deventer was on the program's panel with his wife, Florence Van Deventer, who used her maiden name, appearing on the show as Florence Rinard. Their 14-year-old son, Robert Van Deventer (known on the show as Bobby McGuire) and the program's producer, Herb Polesie, completed the regular panel with daughter Nancy Van Deventer joining the group on occasions. Celebrity guests rarely (though sometimes) contributed to identifying the subject at hand. The Van Deventer family had played the game for years at their home, long before they brought the game to radio, and they were so expert at it that they could often nail the answer after only six or seven questions. On one memorable show, Maguire succeeded in giving the correct answer (Brooklyn) without asking a single question. The studio audience was shown the answer in advance and Maguire based his answer on the audience's reaction. During the 1940s, radio studio audiences included many Brooklynites, and they cheered wildly whenever Brooklyn was mentioned in any context.

The moderator was sportscaster Bill Slater (1902-1965). He answered the queries the panel asked in order to identify the subject. This cast remained largely intact throughout the decade-long run of the show. Slater was succeeded at the beginning of 1953 by Jay Jackson, who remained through the final broadcast.

There were two changes in the juvenile chair on the panel. When McGuire graduated from high school, his decision to go to Duke University meant he could no longer remain on the panel, so he asked his high school friend Johnny McPhee to replace him. Since McPhee was attending Princeton University, he was thus geographically available for the production in New York. McPhee continued until he graduated and was himself succeeded by Dick Harrison (real name John Beebe) in September 1953. Harrison continued until early 1954, when he was replaced by Bobby McGuire, then 22 years old. McGuire appeared as the "oldest living teenager" until the end of the run.

As a television program, Twenty Questions first appeared on WWOR-TV, Channel 9, November 2, 1949, then nationwide on the DuMont Television Network and finally on ABC. The last radio show was broadcast on March 27, 1954, followed by the last TV episode shown on May 3, 1955.

Rights were sold in several other countries, including BBC in the UK, where the subject to be guessed was revealed to the audience by a mystery voice. That format was briefly used again on BBC Radio 4 in the 1990s for a single season hosted by Jeremy Beadle. A TV version was also made by Associated-Rediffusion in the early 1960s. The "mystery voice" gimmick gave rise to a running gag on the radio series I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. A Canadian version, also called Twenty Questions aired on CTV in 1961; its host, Stewart Macpherson, went on to host the Associated-Rediffusion adaptation.

In 1975, a pilot for an American revival 20 Questions was made with host Jack Clark. At Norway's NRK, a version of 20 Questions ran continuously from 1947 to early 1980s. In 2004, this radio show was resurrected and regained its popularity, leading to a 2006 TV version. The Norwegian 20 spørsmål continues on NRK radio and TV, and a web-based game is available at www.nrk.no. A 2006 board game currently is the prize sent to listeners who beat the panel. ^[1]

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• Twenty Questions at IMDB
• 20Q.net - Play 20 Questions against the computer with this artificial intelligence version of Twenty Questions. Everything that it knows and all questions that it asks were entered by people playing the game.
• Barelybad Web Site Detailed rules of the game.
• One: the movie Independent filmmaker Ward Powers presents interviews employing 20 ultimate questions on the meaning of life. (Is the correct guess "one"?)
• Zoo Keeper: The animal guessing game Version of Twenty Questions restricted to animals.