You think of a thing, a la "Animal, vegetable or mineral" game you used to play in the car on long journeys when you were a kid, and press one of the buttons to start.

It scrolls questions along the tiny screen, first asking you whether it's animal, vegetable, mineral or other. That's the first question. After that it asks other questions, often seemingly irrelevant, and after 20 questions is has a guess at what you're thinking of. If it's wrong it asks another 5 questions and then has another guess. And it taunts you along the way saying things like "You think you're tricky!" and "I know what you're thinking of!"

Nothing terribly exciting so far, you might think, but what's got me about it is how bloody good it is.

OK, you have to be a little selective in your objects (it didn't guess Clint Eastwood, but it came up with "Is it a soulmate?" so at least along the right lines), and some of the questions don't make a lot of sense, but that's what the "Unknown" button is for.

I have read claims on the net that it can identify obscure breeds of dog but I'm skeptical.

However the other night it identified "ashtray", and then "pillow", then "gun", and yesterday I had another play and it got "scissors", and "gerbil". Then just now it got "computer keyboard".

Pretty amazing stuff, especially when you have watched the questions because they really don't seem terribly relevant. I really didn't think it would get "gerbil", I mean how did it know I wasn't thinking of a mouse? (Possibly the question 'is it multicoloured' to which I answered "no", whereas a mouse would have been "sometimes".)

Anyway, you start off thinking "there's no way it's gonna get this!"

And then it does.

Recommeneded for a quick play.

Apparently it was based on this web site: http://www.20q.net/.

And you can buy the toy everywhere; just google for "20q".

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