page_title: Guessing
section_title: Guessing games
hierarchical_section_title: Guessing / Uses of guessing / Guessing games
caption_attribution_description: Internationalen Spieltage SPIEL 2008
context_page_description: A guess is a swift conclusion drawn from data directly at hand, and held as probable or tentative, while the person making the guess admittedly lacks material for a greater degree of certainty. A guess is also an unstable answer, as it is "always putative, fallible, open to further revision and interpretation, and validated against the horizon of possible meanings by showing that one interpretation is more probable than another in light of what we already know". In many of its uses, "the meaning of guessing is assumed as implicitly understood", and the term is therefore often used without being meticulously defined. Guessing may combine elements of deduction, induction, abduction, and the purely random selection of one choice from a set of given options. Guessing may also involve the intuition of the guesser, who may have a "gut feeling" about which answer is correct without necessarily being able to articulate a reason for having this feeling.
context_section_description: A guessing game is a game in which the object is to use guessing to discover some kind of information, such as a word, a phrase, a title, or the identity or location of an object. A guessing game has as its core a piece of information that one player knows, and the object is to coerce others into guessing that piece of information without actually divulging it in text or spoken word. Charades is probably the most well-known game of this type, and has spawned numerous commercial variants that involve differing rules on the type of communication to be given, such as Catch Phrase, Taboo, Pictionary, and similar. The genre also includes many game shows such as Win, Lose or Draw, Password and $25,000 Pyramid.
  Many of the games are played co-operatively. In some games some player(s) know the answer, but cannot tell the other(s), instead they must help them to guess it. Guessing games are "readily adaptable for classroom use", as such a game "creates just enough tension to remain exciting, challenging, and competitive" for children, so long as the teacher designs effective rules "to eliminate unruly or unsportsmanship behavior". It has been noted, however, that children in therapy may initiate guessing games as a way to avoid talking about distressing issues, and that therapists who are using other kinds of games to facilitate communication should avoid being drawn into them.
  Examples of guessing games include:
  
  
   
  30 Seconds
  Battleship
  Botticelli
  Charades
  Hangman
  I spy
  Mastermind
   
  Name That Tune
  Pictionary
  Protmušis
  Taboo
  Time's Up!
   
  Twenty Questions
  Ulam's game
  Guess Who?
  What's My Line?
caption: Two people playing Guess Who? at Spiel 2008.
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