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This hand held device won the Energizer Toy of the Year – 2004 and the Oppenheimer Platinum Toy Award – 2004.

Robin Burgener, the inventor of 20Q is based in Ontario, Canada. He began working on 20Q in 1988, with the game running on a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk. Until 1996 over 2000 games were played in this way, creating the basis for the larger online experiment, which led to the launch of the pocket version by Radica.

The device is based on a neural net program running on the internet. A neural net program is not programmed to do something – it is programmed to learn how to do something. It’s task is to guess what object you are thinking of – by asking you 20 questions.

Yep – think of any object in the universe – turn on this device – it will ask you 20 questions about what you are thinking – then tell you what object you are thinking of.

This device is astounding. It is not 100% – there are objects in the universe you can think it can’t guess. For example it won’t guess a Reimann Integral – but it can guess a black hole. The number of things it can guess will amaze you and your friends.