Quizzle – Can you guess the word in fewer than twenty questions?

eriner@lemmy.world to Games@lemmy.world – 217 points –
Quizzle
quizzle.game

I made this game with a friend. We're interested in your feedback!

114

Is it an oven? πŸ‘ Is it a microwave oven? πŸ‘ Is it a countertop microwave oven? πŸ‘ Can it grill food? πŸ‘ Is it a grill microwave oven? - exceeded the question limit, big reveal, answer was "microwave". Interesting but I wasted a lot of questions trying to determine what kind of microwave it was because "microwave oven" was not accepted.

Even saying "oven" as correct threw me off. Ive never called a microwave an oven or a microwave oven. I was like starting to think maybe it wanted a specific brand of oven, or a synonym like stove

Well actually....

An oven is something you put food in to cook by heating the air inside of it.

A range is the burner portion.

A stove is a combination of the two.

Yes this is pedantic and I agree that they're often used interchangeably

I had already narrowed the size down to a smallish (I forgot what I used for comparison) electronic cooking appliance so a full oven was already out. "Toaster oven" was negative, so I tried microwave oven route instead.

I asked if it was larger than a microwave on my second question and it gave it to me...

Edit: There was an update to make it more lenient. Too lenient imo.

That's weird, it accepted "microwave oven" from me just now. My last two questions were:

Is it some kind of oven? πŸ‘

Is it a microwave oven? Yep you got it!

Edit: looks like they implemented a fix for this

I thought I was done when I guessed oven, but there was no clear feedback saying I won. Went to the comments for the actual answer.

So my feedback: fun game! If possible, perhaps add something like "very close" if you guess something that's almost the answer but not quite. Or oven could have just been wrong, since that wasn't the actual answer.

It said that it wasn't bigger than a housecat. That threw me off.

You know, I had the same thought of asking if it was bigger than something, and this happened:

⭐ Quizzle 18 1/20

🟩

https://quizzle.game

I was actually a little disappointed I didn't get to play more!

I thought it was broken, because I asked if it was an oven, and it said yes... And then nothing. Just a bit confusing to people who don't understand AI and fuzzy answers.

Wdym? You're asking Yes or No questions, the word wasn't oven, but the word WAS an oven, it was microwave. I think there was just a misunderstanding

Lmao I got the answer 11 questions in, but because I called it a "microwave oven" instead of just a microwave, it didn't count as correct until I asked "is it a microwave?" for my last question

We've implemented a fix to make it more lenient. Sometimes the synonyms and spellings catch us off guard ("raccoon" vs "racoon"), but we should have known about this one! Sorry about that.

+CC @theparadox@lemmy.world

I had fun anyway, and ain't playing competitively. Long as I know I got it right, I'm happy!

I'm hesitant to say that the current word is a bad choice, but it feels far too specific to me. I'm curious what questions one could ask after finding out that it's a type of f___ that would lead to the exact type of f___ that it is.

Again, I'm hesitant to criticize the decision, because it's entirely possible that I'm just dumb and gave up too soon

I'd rate this one "black diamond" level for sure.

::: spoiler My Questions is it alive? πŸ‘

is it an animal? πŸ‘

is it a land animal? πŸ‘Ž

is it a salt water fish? πŸ‘

is it a tropical fish? πŸ‘

is it commonly consumed in America? πŸ‘Ž

is it a common fish in home aquariums? πŸ‘Ž

is it a common fish in public aquariums? πŸ‘

does it have a distinct color? πŸ€·β€β™‚οΈ

is it larger than a bread box? πŸ‘Ž

is it a keystone species? πŸ€·β€β™‚οΈ

is it a character in the movie Finding Nemo? πŸ‘

Is it larger than one foot in length? πŸ‘Ž

does it have unique characteristics that differentiate it from other fish? πŸ‘

is it a clown fish? πŸ‘Ž

is it an angler fish? πŸ‘Ž

is it a deep sea fish? πŸ‘Ž

is it a seahorse? ⭐ :::

Agreed. I narrowed it down to a small species of ocean fish that was featured in Finding Nemo, but couldn't figure out how to pin down a specific species.

I feel the same way to be honest, with the current question I did it all the way through and I was at odds end of what I could ask it aside from just straight out asking if it's a specific type, third question in was the exact one that you spoilered out and yet I wasn't even able to get a general ballpark of what it was in the next 17 questions.

I got a no for can you hold it so I was sure it was a normal oven. You can definitely hold a microwave they're not that big 🀣

i made the mistake of checking the comments before playing so...

Yeah I don't think anyone realized that everyone got the same word. Can't blame em for babbling about it, but it's a major bummer because now I'm obviously not going to play.

Oooh this is a cool concept, thanks for sharing! I'll add it to my rotation of stuff to play on my conmute.

I threw some weird questions here and there to see if it had issues, it didn't know how to answer either of these:

-Does its name start with a vowel?
-Does its name have less than ten letters?

Although that might have been due to my clumsy wording.

LLMs tend to perform poorly with questions about linguistic characteristics of words. We have tuned responses to gently discourage questions like that. We also feel that they're kind of "cheating" at this sort of game. :)

Glad you enjoy it!

I asked the same question (does it start with a vowel) and agree that it shouldn't answer even if it could but I have a suggestion: use a different emoji than the "I don't know" one to mean "that's kinda cheating"

We also feel that they’re kind of β€œcheating” at this sort of game.

Hehehehehehe that is true, I'll play fair instead of trying to see what it lets me get away with. Well, most days at least.

Haven't tried using llm for this kind of stuff so it's very interesting to see where its limits lie

2 more...

I came as far as asking: is it an oven πŸ‘ Then: is it a stove πŸ‘Ž Then wtf is it???

I never in my life have considered a microwave to be an oven, but obviously it is. I've never had one, so I have limited experience with it.

Apparently microwaves aren't made of metal >:(

Microwaves also don't contain motors πŸ˜‚

By any chance did you ask "is it a metal?" Microwaves contain/are made of metal but aren't a metal.

I asked if it contained at least 30% metal

Thanks for your feedback! We've implemented a change to improve the outcome of this kind of question in the future.

I got it in 19, but only because I asked if it was smaller than a house cat and I thought raccoons were larger.

Does its prevalence cause existential dread due to consumerism in the western hemisphere? πŸ‘Ž Does it make chicken rubbery? πŸ‘

I asked "is it famous?" πŸ‘

I asked "is it in North America?" πŸ‘Ž

It was an oven lol.

Actually the lastest one isn't an oven as the final answer. My wife asked that and was like, "so why isn't it over??"

This was my exact experience and I couldn't figure out how to make it end. Was I supposed to guess which brand? Or was it something picky like a microwave oven?

It was ”microwave”. Which, technically is an oven, which is why it answers yes to that.

Wow I didn't realize it wasn't over yet, thanks for the heads up. I'm still a little salty about some of the answers though :)

It was "microwave". Which, technically is an oven, which is why it answers yes to that.

Can I wear it? πŸ‘Ž Is it a microwave? πŸ‘

This is too easy

I asked

"Is it living" πŸ‘Ž

"Is it larger than a microwave?" Wow you got it!

I would consider the answer to that question a no, not a "You solved it!" A microwave is not larger than a microwave.

Edit: They updated the game to make it more lenient after people guessing microwave over didn't get it. It's too lenient now though, in my opinion.

Similar but I thought it worked around it another way lol. I asked if it was smaller than a refrigerator (y) and larger than a toaster (y). I arrived at it being an appliance in the kitchen, so I thought it just said yes for the first one and it was a refrigerator. I was sad when it wasn't lol

The AI seemed to struggle with scientific names for #19.

The question ::: spoiler spoiler "Is it in the Actinopterygii class?" ::: was answered as no, though the correct answer should have been yes.

Same with me! I was binary searching cladistically and it spoiler >!it was a jawed animal and did not have hard bones!<. My search among the >!cartilaginous fish!< was all negative. Damn

It’s a really cool concept! Not much to improve regarding the UI. One small thing is, I found the thumbs up or down a bit less intuitive than seeing the answer spelled out

I had no idea a ______ could be considered food…..

What.

I also wouldn't consider underscores food

I dunno how difficult to implement this might be, but it ought to be cognizant of Linnaean taxonomy. I just had one where the word was seahorse, but the bot claimed it was not a ray-finned fish.

How does this work? You can't possibly have all these questions hard coded. Is it asking something like ChatGPT "does an X eat meat?"

Yeah I noticed the past two days already that it answers with an LLM, and that of course gets stuff wrong quite frequently.

It said you couldn't throw it, so that threw me off. Pun intended.

I asked if the word was a noun, and it gave me a "don't know". I asked if the word was an adjective, and also got a "don't know", so I gave up.

Asking about linguistic characteristics of the word is cheating in twenty questions! :) There's a note about this at the end of the "How To" that's linked on the front page.

Why would that be cheating?

Also maybe a prompt to this note when you fall foul of this rule would be better than a "I don't know" amoji.

If it doesn't know, you should get another question.

That’s already the behavior. Those don’t count as tries.

Well in this case the instructions specifically say to avoid those kinds of questions.

The word for me was seahorse, but when I asked it if it had scales the game answered yes. Seahorses do not have scales.

Spoilers! :) I checked this one and it seems to have corrected itself. You're absolutely correct, though!

"is it a proper noun": πŸ€·β€β™‚οΈ

"are there multiple of this": πŸ‘Ž

Thanks for finding this issue. Our "cheater buster" was a bit overzealous about the first question, but it's a legitimate non-cheating question so we've made an exception. It should work in the future. The second question was "no" probably because the word itself isn't in the plural form. The question "is there more than one of them in the world?" is functionally equivalent and works around this quirk.

I asked if it had stripes mid way through and it said no….its wrong. Lame.

⭐ Quizzle 18 5/20

β¬›πŸŸ¨πŸŸ¨πŸŸ¨πŸŸ©

https://quizzle.game

Got it pretty fast!

Get wrecked (/s)

⭐ Quizzle 18 2/20

β¬›πŸŸ©

https://quizzle.game

My second question was "Is it larger than a microwave" and it gave it to me. Sorta BS tbh. Idk if I'd have ever gotten it if it'd answered that question as "no" like it should've.

Edit: They updated it to make it more lenient. Imo too lenient.

Nice lol. My questions were:

Is it larger than a Toyota Corolla? πŸ‘Ž

Does it use power? πŸ‘

Is it used in the kitchen? πŸ‘

Does it cook food? πŸ‘

Is it a microwave? πŸ‘

It would be cool if you could replay previous days

"Something went wrong" when I asked "Can I wear it". Almost couldn't continue until it finally went through. Would be good if you could change the question again if there's an error

Eyy got it in 7

Is it an object? πŸ‘ is it something found in a house? πŸ‘ is it an appliance? πŸ‘ Is it a kitchen appliance? πŸ‘ is it a toaster? πŸ‘Ž Does it heat food? πŸ‘ is it a microwave?

Pretty cool game, didn't manage to find the answer in 20 questions though

Think it's broken, I asked it

"is it under 6 letters" "is it less than 6 letters"

And it shrugged both times

Word was a seahorse. I narrowed it down to saltwater fish and asked if it had teeth and it replied thumbs up. Seahorse doesn't have teeth, son

It would be great if you could open source it

It is interesting, but with weird quirks.

It is definitely capable of responding with πŸ€·β€β™‚οΈ, but neglects to do so in some expected areas.

"does it use a microprocessor?" πŸ‘ "was it invented before 1970?" πŸ‘

These are somewhat contradictory. No microwave in 1946-1971 could have had a microprocessor. If the answer is "sometimes yes, sometimes no" then πŸ€·β€β™‚οΈ is probably best.

Well, both are true though for microwaves as we know them right now.

So if the answer is yes and no (conditional versus a universal property of the thing), you always answer yes? I would consider that strange, but as long as it is applied consistently then I suppose it is fine.