Q20 - The Perfect Holiday Gift?

For those of you who don't know what Q20 is I will say this... I am not sure it is evil and I am not sure it is holy, but it definitely varies between the two and it is SCARY. Scary like the way babies can fold all the way over their legs. Scary like my mom's ability to grab a hot pan out of the oven (with no mit) and not flinch. Q20 is a small, round, plastic object (about the size of my fist - or your's... whatever.) It can READ YOUR MIND. You think of a word and Q20 will ask you a series of questions and guess the word in less than 20.

My first introduction to Q20 was VERY brief and occurred at work so I did not have the opportunity to fully test its capabilities. A colleague of mine had one on her desk and said, "think of a word." Well I was put on the spot and my word was in retrospect, stupid. "Firetruck." I said to her. She then handed me the Q20 and it began a series of questions, "Is it animal?" and so on. After about ten questions it said, "I know what it is... Its Firetruck." Stunned, I almost dropped the little devil. I hurried back to work and forgot the entire encounter.

My second meeting was much more intimate and relaxed. In helping a friend decide which of three gifts to take to a holiday party as a white elephant I found myself thrown together with Q20 once more. I began hesitantly and asked my friend to think of a word. He did and Q20 began a line of questioning. Within about 18 guesses it had found that his word was BUS. I became intrigued as did my friend and we decided to do our best at stumping this little marvel.

We had a brief conversation about words this thing would not know... We settled on toe and quickly found that the Q20s line of questioning, while adept, could not narrow down to individual filanges. The closest it came was foot, which obviously still amazed us and almost had me shooving it down the garbage disposal out of fear! We played another couple of rounds and lost each time as the Q20 somehow read our minds... At this point I had decided we could not say the word outloud fearing some sort of mini-ear on this object... But, my next word was genius! MOLD! I just couldn't believe that some programmer had thought that "mold" would be a word that needed to be programmed into Q20's scary little brain. We began our line of questioning, "is it an animal?" Obviously some of these questions were somewhat stumping even to me, "Does it move?" hmm... Finally after 20 questions had passed Q20 arrogantly said, "I know... Its DUST." I stood happily shocked and a bit crushed... I had beaten Q20. But what does that mean?

I decided to further test the Q20 to see where its weaknesses lie and found that it was like playing 20 questions with a small child. Granted, a very smart child, but a child. It could not guess small body parts, reproductive organs (giggle), or anything beyond a PG-13 rating. However, if you stick to objects you will lose to Q20 every day of the week and find yourself becoming slightly paranoid. You will catch yourself thinking thoughts and then just as quickly thinking, "oh - crap - did it read that thought?" You'll want to throw it out of a moving vehicle or at the very least smash it with a hammer, but then you'll think, "did it just read THAT thought?" You are best to never pick it up at all...