Game on: animal, vegetable, mineral

We’ve done pictures, numbers, shoogling things about on a tray – it’s time for games of deduction. Probably the one we play most is Animal Vegetable or Mineral.

For whatever reason, this seems to get played at the dinner table, when we’re all home.  (Thankfully, the others are not necessarily applying the game to what’s on their plates.
Or else, quite frankly!)

I think there is something to do with having the time and relaxed space to play a game of deduction, that works. Just as teatime offers a chance to chat, it offers a chance to combine talking and playing, which is generally fine by me.

It’s also an interesting way of Junior Player learning about the difference between broad and narrow categories – as well as a test of memory for all of us to work out which questions have already been asked.

How to play

The name of the game gives the starting point.  One player thinks of an item – the others have to guess what it is. The opening question is therefore: ‘Animal, vegetable or mineral?’

In practice, it’s generally easier to stick to animal or vegetable – mineral covers an awful lot of possibilities. (You can also include the question of whether the item is still alive/in existence or not, but we haven’t gone there yet.)

You have to ask questions which can be answered by yes or no only.  The notion is that you keep going until you guess the right answer, going from broader questions to narrower ones by the end.

You can also choose to make this 20 questions – in which case it’s up to you whether you just start in with a question, or use the opening ‘animal, vegetable…’ to begin.

Broad to narrow categories

We’ve played this quite a bit with a different game, Zoo Am I? (alternative post some time), so Junior Player has a notion of how this works.

You start with questions where knowing yes or no will give you the chance to cut out quite a lot of alternatives. e.g.

‘Does it live on land?’

If you get a yes, there’s still lots to choose from; if you get a no, however, you cut out lots of options, so it’s easier to ask follow up questions.

If the animal does live on land, you could ask another fairly broad question to cut out some more options e.g.

‘Does it live in a jungle?’ OR ‘Does it have 4 legs?’ OR ‘Does it eat meat?’ and so on.

Narrowing the search

Once you feel you are getting closer, you can start to try some narrower questions e.g.

‘Is it brown?’ Asking the colour too early on gives you too many options – asking later can help you get closer to identifying an individual animal. And finally:

‘Is it a monkey?’ can help you play your hunch, and see if you are right. If not, you get to keep guessing, but you still have a more informed idea of what the animal (or other item) is like.

Red herrings

Beware of asking too many questions that your junior player may not be sure of. They may well know what some animals eat, but not others.

You can ask the ‘Does it eat meat?’ question, receive a certain reply, and be taken on a very roundabout route before you discover that the animal they were thinking of does in fact eat meat after all.

Numbers of legs is usually OK, as are questions about whether an animal can swim/fly etc.

Keeping on track

I find that it helps if I repeat the clues I’ve gained as I go along – it helps me, at any rate!

‘So…it lives in the water, it doesn’t have fins, it’s green…is it a frog?’

You would normally be lucky to get it that fast.  It’s not 20 questions for nothing.  (In fact, we don’t usually limit the number of questions, in practice – if Junior Player is still on board, still guessing, we keep going.)

Mineral – the wild card

Mineral includes anything that’s not animal or vegetable, so it’s a pretty big category.  We do play on this at times, but the questions shift e.g.

‘Does it have wheels?’ ‘Is it made of metal?’ etc. Vehicles tend to be easier to think about – but the questions to tell them apart can go on for a while.

Timing

Timing is everything with junior players.  Having a game that will extend, when they like it, or stop when they don’t, can help keep them on board better.

So be aware of what helps.  The main fun for a child is keeping an adult guessing – they’ll probably be happy to keep going on this (though you may tire after a while, particularly if the animal in question does NOT have 4 legs).

However, they may tire of asking lots of questions, and getting it wrong. If they’re into lots of ‘Is it this animal? Is it that animal?’ questions, a judicious use of Clues is in order.

If either of you is getting closer to meltdown, a Big Clue can really help wrap up the game fast – enough so that they guess right, and still want to play the game again another time.

It’s up to you whether you want to include, or exclude, fictional or TV characters – I think we’ve generally gone ‘real world’, but you could have some fun with characters too.

Given children’s love of questions, and the opportunity to help them form questions other than ‘why?’, you may find your audience is more willing than you might suspect.