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Volunteering at Scouts is changing to help us reach more young people

Volunteering is changing to help us reach more young people

Volunteering is changing at Scouts. Read more

Discover what this means

Play 20 Questions

Play this classic game and guess what's someone's thinking of in only 20 turns by working together and asking the right questions.
Plan a session with this activity

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You’ll need

  • Pens or pencils
  • Scrap paper

Before you begin

  • Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found here. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
  • Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers.

Planning this activity

  • You could prepare some cue cards with simple questions on them, such as ‘Can it be kept as a pet?’, ‘Are they fictional?’ or ‘Can you eat it?’. This'll help anyone who can’t think of a question to ask during the game.

Run the activity

  1. Gather everyone together and tell them that you're playing a game called ‘20 questions’.
  2. As a group, you could decide on a category, such as ‘places’, or you could make it harder by letting people choose anything.
  3. Everyone should get into groups of between two and five people. If you’re playing this game at camp or any night away, you may wish to play in a larger group. Smaller groups work better at weekly meetings.
  4. Each group should choose someone to go first. That person should think of something for people to guess within the chosen category.
  5. Between them, each group should take turns to ask the person who chose the object a question, until 20 questions have been asked. Someone should keep track of the number of questions that have been asked.
  6. Each question should have a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answer. Everyone in the group should use the information to try and guess who or what the person's thinking of.
  7. Each round lasts until 20 questions have been asked or the object is guessed.
  8. If someone guesses correctly what the thing was, they can choose the next thing.
  9. If no-one guesses correctly, the chooser can have another turn or choose someone else to go.

Category ideas

You could think of a wide range of items. Some ideas are:

  • An ‘animal’ could be any creature, such as pets, insects or wild animals, such as polar bears or lions. It could also be an animal or creature that’s extinct, such as a dinosaur.
  • A 'person' could be a notable person, celebrity, a fictional figure, or a historical or famous figure and they could be living or dead. Some ideas could be Bear Grylls, Henry VIII, Harry Potter or Ellie Simmonds.
  • A ‘food’ could be a vegetable, fruit or other food or drink item.
  • A ‘place’ could be a landmark, fictional location, beach, a natural geographical feature (such as a waterfall or mountain), a city or a country.
  • A ‘natural object’ may be any plant, flower or a type of rock.
  • An 'art' could be a painting, an artist, a musician, a play, a musical or theatre show, or a song.
  • A 'book, film or TV show' could be a book, an author, a book character or place, a TV show, a TV character, a film character, a film or a director.

Players should try to be specific. For example, if they want to choose a tree, it should be a specific type of tree, such as ‘oak tree,’ ‘willow tree’ or ‘cherry blossom tree.’

Players may ask a volunteer for the right word if they aren’t sure about their choice.

You could encourage everyone to think of something that connects to Scouts or Scouts activities, to narrow things down and fit the game to your programme.

Reflection

It was important for those asking the questions to think carefully about what they asked.

With a limited number of questions, what information did you need to get out of the chooser? What kind of questions did you ask first? Which questions helped you the most?

Remember, every problem has a solution and that you just have to be creative to find it. Can you think of any people who might have to ask creative questions as part of their job?

Safety

All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.

You could play this game in pairs, with one person choosing and the other person guessing.

Giving the objects a connection to Scouts or another element of the programme should narrow down the possible answers and should make the game relatable to everyone.

If anyone has difficulty thinking up a question, use cue cards to prompt them. Cue cards could also help someone to choose the animal, vegetable or mineral for other people to guess.

All Scout activities should be inclusive and accessible.

Beavers Teamwork Challenge Award
Cubs Teamwork Challenge Award
Scouts Teamwork Challenge Award

Give everyone the freedom to think of items that the rest of their group might struggle to guess from the category!

Once everyone understands the game, let young leaders and/or members of the group run this game.