I got it with Berry Hay, singer for Golden Earring, and Thomas Johnson the first governor of Maryland.
There is a ton of stuff in there… it even got the little blue and red alien guys from Sesame Street
I stumped it with Rod Carew, a member of the baseball Hall of Fame. It was not in the database.
Wow. 17 guesses to get Egon from Ghostbusters.
Some of the questions are a bit “off”.
Did your character ever leave a team? Well almost any pro athlete left their school team when they graduated.
Does your character come from the internet? Nobody “comes from the internet” except a fictional comic strip character or something like that.
One way to prolong the agony a bit is to change the entity you have in mind so that you avoid giving it specific information. For example, it just asked me if it was an adult male, so I switched from “Jim Rockford” to “The Bionic Woman,” as anybody who is not an adult male could be either a male child/teen, or a female of any age. It then wasted a question asking me if it was a male (of any age). You just need to make sure that whoever you switch to is consistent with the previous choices.
I eventually, after several more choices, settled on Polly Sherman from Fawlty Towers, and stumped him even after 3 tries. On the subsequent attempts he seems like he forgets prior information, asking me if she was British again.
It got Saul Tigh in 20 questions.
Dayum.
Got Princess Clara (Drawn Together) in about 15 guesses.
Molly Weasley in 20.
And the one I thought would really stump it: Lazarus Long - got it in 20.
Ditto Miles Vorkosigan.
I did finally stump it with Dr. Ethan Urquhart (main character of Ethan of Athos, also by Bujold).
It got the Grim Reaper in 20, first guess. Well actually I was thinking of the skeleton bandleader from the Black Parade album but I gave it to him. But people said he was an adult male: umm, no, he’s a skeleton or spirit, not an adult male (both of them)
Nope, that just helped it nail it on the bullseye the instant you confirmed both qualities.
I will say, even tho I win maybe 1 out 3 games, it often does seem to be reading my mind. I was doing Heinz Guderian, and right after several vague questions, on like #9 or thereabouts it asked if he was a German General. Jaron Lanier-same thing-on #11 it asks if he is involved in computers, after a bunch of general questions I mostly answered negative to. I know part of that is confirmation bias, but it is still unnerving.
only read 1st post
defeated it with Speaker To Animals
A lot of this might be down to how well you know your subject. Some of the questions I had to google. In the case of the op-art artist Bridget Riley, one of the questions was ‘Does she have small breasts?’ Huh? I have no idea. That might have the crucial clue, and my answer of ‘I don’t know’ might have been the reason it couldn’t come up with the right answer.