Because anyone can play by the rules that come in the box

So if you want to understand this post at all, you need to remember Guess Who. A board game only fractionally more challenging than Hungry Hungry Hippos, it involved a flat of little doors for each player. Each door had a picture of a “character” with a unique set of features – blue eyes, brown eyes, mustache, beard, etc. At the beginning of the game, you and your opponent each picked a card that specified one of the characters. By asking yes-or-no questions (“Does your person have dark hair?” “Is your person smiling?”) and flipping shut a door when its character was thus eliminated, you were supposed to guess the character on your opponent’s card before he or she guessed yours.

Come on, I remember thinking this game was boring even when I was eight.

Fortunately, a little creativity never comes amiss. And that’s why I invented Subjective Guess Who.

HOW TO PLAY SUBJECTIVE GUESS WHO

My housemates and I and many of our more unfortunate guests used to play it all the time. In fact, if you know me well enough that you’re reading this blog, you’ve probably already played a round.

The rules are simple. It’s just like regular Guess Who – you’re still trying to guess your opponent’s card before he or she guesses yours, you can still ask only yes-or-no questions – but with one twist: instead of asking objective questions (“Is your person bald?”), both players may ask only subjective questions. Id est, you can’t ask a question if the picture on the card answers it definitively.

Allowed: Does your person like children? Have they been to jail? Does he or she know how to check email? Is your person ugly? Do they look like they’ve just finished saying, “Why, no, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die.”?

Not allowed: Does your person have blue eyes?

This may sound like a game that never ends, but, believe it or not, most times I’ve played, the first guess is correct. (I suppose, to be fair, I ought to warn that a number of rounds also ended in both of us flipping over our boards and starting over from scratch.) It’s best to play with the old version of the game, where the portraits were more than slightly politically incorrect and hence rampant with stereotypes from which the astute player can draw.

RECOMMENDED STRATEGY

– Remember, when your opponent answers “yes” to “Would you trust your person with a gun?”, she’s answering for herself, not for you. Of course, you could as easily ask, “Do you think I’d trust your person with a gun?” If you want to get all self-referential and such.

– Also remember that different questions mean different things to different people. For example, the gun question above could be interpreted to mean, “Does your person look violent/suicidal/crazy/incompetent?”

– You can play with more than one person per team – just remember that the conversations you have trying to decide how to answer the question are as revealing as the answers… dun dun DUN!

– I guess that wasn’t really a strategy, was it?

– Don’t be a loser and ask questions that are technically subjective but really equivalent to some objective question. This can be tricky. For example, “Does your person have a uterus?”, while not actually verifiable, is pretty much the same as, “Is your character a woman?”

– Don’t be a loser and lie to confuse the other player.

– Just don’t be a loser, period.

That’s right, the recommended strategy is “don’t be a loser”. Live with it.

Does your person play board games other people make up when they have too much time on their hands?