8/13/2007 - 20Q - Rude word

Those electronic 20 Questions machines are really quite remarkable. If you have an object in mind that is relatively non-obscure, and you tell the truth to the machine, it will most likely guess the object correctly after 20 questions. Before computer memory was cheap, it would have been hard to imagine a handheld machine like this would be possible. Now, with solid-state memory averaging $10 per gigabyte, it's easy to see how an entire dictionary would fit into a small gaming device. You may think that there is some artificial intelligence built into a 20 Questions machine, and you would not be too far off. The machine will progressively ask questions that narrow downs the list of possible answers as much as it can. There is some fuzzy logic involved, but each dictionary item will have their own built-in answers to each of the questions asked. It just takes a computer that will play the game better than any human could.

So what happens when you choose a relatively obscure object... say, a certain part of the male anatomy? Well, not only does hilarity ensue, but the machine really comes close too...