The 20 Questions Menu Detective
One player secretly selects an item from the restaurant menu or a dish they see being served, and others use yes/no questions to guess what it is.
- Takes
- 30 min–1 hr
- Your setup
- 1 min prep
- Ages
- Ages 8 and up
- Mess
- No mess
- Cost
- Free
- Where
- Indoors
How to do it
- 1Player 1 selects a specific item (e.g., 'The chef's special grilled salmon').
- 2Other players ask closed (yes/no) questions, focusing first on categories (Is it a dessert? Does it contain meat?).
- 3Keep track of the remaining questions. If the guessers succeed before 20 questions, they win. If not, Player 1 wins.
- 4Vary the difficulty by allowing selections that are visual ('The red coat on the hostess') or environmental ('The salt shaker').
What they're practising
- Deductive Reasoning
- Verbal Strategy
- Critical Thinking
- Vocabulary Expansion