So this post is going to be a little different from the others. Just like the heading says, it is about a game that can help you calm down, but the difference here is that this game has not been made for stress relief and has no evidence pointing towards that either. Instead it’s just a game I came across a long time ago which I used to have a lot fun playing and just generally wasting time with.
A lot of you may have already heard of this, and for those of you who haven’t, consider this an introduction. I’m talking about Akinator.
Akinator is a web based guessing game. Basically you think of someone and the genie guy tries to work out who you are thinking about by asking you some yes and no questions. Now that may sound really simple, all things considered; but you have to remember this isn’t a person asking these questions and then working out through leaps of logic who you are thinking of, this is a computer program.
That means someone (or a bunch of people) thought up the best yes or no questions that would help deduce something and then coded it into programme so that it would search through an almost infinite database (the internet) and narrow down those almost infinite possibilities so that some cartoon genie can figure out what you’re thinking about, and the phenomenal part is, it gets it right 90% of the time! That’s insane! Do you know how much programming/coding that takes? Do you know how much math that takes? I’m no good at coding or math (believe me I really tried), so I can appreciate how much work this person/these people must have done.
Anyway, I digress. I have a lot of fun playing Akinator, especially when I’m bored and have nothing else to do. It’s safe for work too which is good, just make sure your boss doesn’t catch you playing when you’re supposed to be working (it’s not my fault I finished the work early today, you won’t let me leave early so shut up and let me play).
Here’s a video of someone playing it.
I used to keep trying to win against Akinator by thinking of things it would never guess. For the most part I lost, but I did win sometimes; and that was only when I thought of a really obscure person who most people don’t know about, like certain outlandish poets or actors.
There are times when I felt the game was broken or confused because sometimes it would ask the same question twice but that’s okay, it’s a fun little game to play when you want to waste time and you can really get into it so it’s a good way to forget about everything else for a little while. Give it a try and have some fun, see if you can confuse that Akinator genie thing.
Challenge the genie and do tell me about it (in the comments section below).
Alternative Yoga 