Twenty questions, round 502

[Jamiet99uk]

I am against conditional follow-up questions, and frankly, I'm against conditional guesses.

I think the fairest approach is to make it a rule that the QM must answer valid questions, and cannot defer answering a valid question until some arbitrary later point.

[damo666]

My opinions.

i) Any question must be answered irrespective of its number unless rendered redundant by previous answers.

ii) conditional guesses should not be allowed.

iii) conditional guesses should be allowed, I reintroduced it a while back. My reasoning is you don't want to ask a question that is made redundant by an a future answer to an existing question and this being a global 24 hour platform it is impractical to monitor. Allowing conditional questions makes it easier for the QM to spot if a q is redundant. If we disallow conditional questions it puts an extra burden on the QM to spot redundant questions (ok no that onerous but still). I simply don't see the harm in cq's.

[Jamiet99uk]

For (iii) did you mean to say conditional questions, Damo?

[yavuzovic]

I think it is fair for QM to give extra time, because otherwise the 20th question can be sabotaged to deny others of their free guesses. Before the 20th question is asked, everyone is equally given 1 free guess and if they know the answer before others, it is impossible to be unfairly judged. Delaying to answer the 20th question only gives players time to catch up, not an extra guess. Most players like to keep their guess until more information is revealed so I'm in support of the current way.

[Jamiet99uk]

I think it is fair for QM to give extra time, because otherwise the 20th question can be sabotaged to deny others of their free guesses. Before the 20th question is asked, everyone is equally given 1 free guess and if they know the answer before others, it is impossible to be unfairly judged. Delaying to answer the 20th question only gives players time to catch up, not an extra guess. Most players like to keep their guess until more information is revealed so I'm in support of the current way.

That would be changing the format of the game into a game with three distinct phases:

1. Nineteen questions;
2. Free guessing phase;
3. Final question and five total guesses allowed.

[yavuzovic]

I think it is fair for QM to give extra time, because otherwise the 20th question can be sabotaged to deny others of their free guesses. Before the 20th question is asked, everyone is equally given 1 free guess and if they know the answer before others, it is impossible to be unfairly judged. Delaying to answer the 20th question only gives players time to catch up, not an extra guess. Most players like to keep their guess until more information is revealed so I'm in support of the current way.

That would be changing the format of the game into a game with three distinct phases:

1. Nineteen questions;
2. Free guessing phase;
3. Final question and five total guesses allowed.

You can still guess earlier if you don't want to lose to someone faster.

[yavuzovic]

There might be something detrimental with this, I'm not sure if there was a reason for making this rule in the first place but instead we can allow free guesses to be placed separately from the 5 guesses even after the 20th question so QM doesn't have to give discretionary extra time while nobody loses their free guesses.

[damo666]

For (iii) did you mean to say conditional questions, Damo?

yeah, sorry

[DreamTrawler]

There might be something detrimental with this, I'm not sure if there was a reason for making this rule in the first place but instead we can allow free guesses to be placed separately from the 5 guesses even after the 20th question so QM doesn't have to give discretionary extra time while nobody loses their free guesses.

I could see that, I suppose. In the end most games usually don't even go to the final 5 questions.

[Hominidae]

On what basis does the QM have the discretion to refuse to answer a TOTALLY VALID question just because they want to give their mates more time to try to win?

I think you're misunderstanding the rules a bit here. Free guesses are only allowed up until the 20th question is answered. After the 20th question is answered, no one gets any more free guesses, but the group as a whole gets five guesses, regardless of whether they've used up their free guesses or not. So if the first 19 questions have already been answered but the 20th has not, you have literally nothing to lose by making a free guess, as long as your guess fits all the existing questions. If you had guessed Henry and then QM had come in and said "no" to Henry and "no" to your question, that's fine, you still would have had a chance to make one of the five additional guesses.

It's been standard for a while for QMs to pause after 19 questions for this reason.

I don't think there has been a QM win in 300+ rounds, not because people are so good at guessing, but mostly because QMs do this and that (wait for free guesses, offer additional questions, provide clues, etc.) to help the guessers and keep the QM seat rotating. This also has a bonus of allowing for a greater number of possible picks, because some of the more obscure or clever picks sometimes need a little extra. Sometimes those bonus pushes come at the (unintentional) expense of some players. I have made the point before of asking whether a clue is incoming, since there was a period of time where I seemed to miss answers with a bad guess only for QMs to come in and give a big boost with a clue right after. I don't think that is malicious, but it can be annoying to the player it seems to harm.

The reason I don't ever want to "win" as a QM is that it would imply that my pick was too obscure, or too random, in the first place. If I chose some random low-level Hungarian politician from the 1890s and no one guessed it, it feels wrong to call that a "win" for me. If this was an actual competitive game where QMs were trying to "win", it would be 500+ rounds of MSmart choosing random names out of a phone book. However, the possibility of a QM win should probably exist for the game to be fun.

Hints and bonuses definitely need to be given out sparingly though--ideally not at all, although there are exceptional circumstances. Based on arguments you've made, I've arrived at the belief that the end-of-game type hints should only be given out after Question 20, so that people don't wait for them in order to make free guesses (which I don't think anyone was ever doing, but I get the concern there).

Second, my recollection is that conditional guesses were disallowed because people - generally the same people with a ton of wins - got very good at asking pinpoint questions that could only lead to one realistic answer, so it ended up being a way to snipe answers very early in the rounds and box out newer players (e.g., does this person have [XYZ] award during [this time period]? If yes, [conditional guess], where only [conditional guess] could be the answer). Conditional questions are a little different since the benefit doesn't just accrue to the player asking it.

My issue with conditional guesses is that you can use them to make a free guess without actually using up your free guess. The nice thing about the free guess system is if a player makes a free guess early on and it's wrong, they're effectively out of the game unless they make an unfree guess or it goes to 20 questions, so other players have more of a chance, but with conditional guesses, that effect is reduced. When conditional guesses were allowed, the QM spot mostly rotated between the same 4 or 5 people, even more so than it does now.

[Jamiet99uk]

I'm not misunderstanding the rules. It appears that a convention has arisen among some QMs, whereby the QM will refuse to answer the 20th question until a selection of regular participants gets their free guess in.

I do not think this should be the case; I think the QM is obliged to answer valid questions.

[JECE]

Hominidae:

I think that Jamiet99uk understands the rules.

Another good point about why to ban conditional guesses!

[Hominidae]

I'm not misunderstanding the rules. It appears that a convention has arisen among some QMs, whereby the QM will refuse to answer the 20th question until a selection of regular participants gets their free guess in.

I do not think this should be the case; I think the QM is obliged to answer valid questions.

I'm still not sure what your complaint is with this convention. If you understood the rules, why didn't you make your free guess when you had the opportunity?

[Hominidae]

I know who I want to guess, if the answer to my Q20 is "yes".

At this point, 19 questions had been answered and no one had correctly guessed the answer yet. There would have been literally no downside to Jamie guessing Henry at this point, regardless of whether the guess ended up being right or wrong.

[Jamiet99uk]

I'm not misunderstanding the rules. It appears that a convention has arisen among some QMs, whereby the QM will refuse to answer the 20th question until a selection of regular participants gets their free guess in.

I do not think this should be the case; I think the QM is obliged to answer valid questions.

I'm still not sure what your complaint is with this convention. If you understood the rules, why didn't you make your free guess when you had the opportunity?

I had already made a free guess.

[Hominidae]

I'm not misunderstanding the rules. It appears that a convention has arisen among some QMs, whereby the QM will refuse to answer the 20th question until a selection of regular participants gets their free guess in.

I do not think this should be the case; I think the QM is obliged to answer valid questions.

I'm still not sure what your complaint is with this convention. If you understood the rules, why didn't you make your free guess when you had the opportunity?

I had already made a free guess.

Ah, I missed that. Sorry for insinuating that you didn't understand the rules.

Still, I think it's overall better for gameplay if QMs pause to allow free guesses after Question 19. If you use your free guess early, you're taking a risk and the consequence may be not being able to make a free guess later, and someone else might get there first.

And I don't think it's just to allow regulars, or the QM's buddies, to make free guesses--it's to allow time for multiple people to make free guesses. It doesn't need to be 24 hours or anything, because this game isn't that serious, but it's helpful if it's enough time that most people get a chance if they can think of someone.