I play it with my son and it seems like a perfect exercise in being specific. You need to be very observant and ask very precise questions. The competitive element increases its attractiveness. The set of cartoons/data to guess from is typically structured as lattice—there are many differently overlapping categories with subtly different frequencies—you quickly learn to exploit those to your advantage.
And of course you may experiment with game data. Replace cartoons with concepts. Or use artificially generated graphical shapes with different properties, e.g. number of vertexes, color, convex/concave etc. Or just spend few bucks and find/buy one of the replacement sheets on the web.
I was thinking along the same lines. A set of similar images are presented to person A. A single one of those images is also presented to person B. Person B is to provide a description to person A, specific enough that A can accurately identify the image from the set.
The main difference from “Guess Who” would be that person B provides their description up front with multiple details, rather than detail by detail, back and forth, and person A has a single chance to decide.
If this were done in a setting with computers and internet connections, using something like google image search and keywords to generate the pictures might work. ‘Redhead child’ immediately comes up with many images which are suitable for such a game.
Along the lines of replacing cartoons with concepts, I had also thought to replace images with sounds, bits of music, tastes, in the proper setting. I am able to explain to someone many details of an image if it is in front of me, even if it is abstract. I am less able to do this with something I can’t see. Explaining a bit of bird song, or a series of musical notes that are played by a certain instrument, where I lack familiarity, would be more intense and interesting (to me at least ^_^).
I’d expect learning to do wine tasting would be an easy way to get introduced to describing flavors. It’s something I’ve been considering for myself :)
What about “Guess Who?” game? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guess_Who%3F
I play it with my son and it seems like a perfect exercise in being specific. You need to be very observant and ask very precise questions. The competitive element increases its attractiveness. The set of cartoons/data to guess from is typically structured as lattice—there are many differently overlapping categories with subtly different frequencies—you quickly learn to exploit those to your advantage.
And of course you may experiment with game data. Replace cartoons with concepts. Or use artificially generated graphical shapes with different properties, e.g. number of vertexes, color, convex/concave etc. Or just spend few bucks and find/buy one of the replacement sheets on the web.
I was thinking along the same lines. A set of similar images are presented to person A. A single one of those images is also presented to person B. Person B is to provide a description to person A, specific enough that A can accurately identify the image from the set.
The main difference from “Guess Who” would be that person B provides their description up front with multiple details, rather than detail by detail, back and forth, and person A has a single chance to decide.
If this were done in a setting with computers and internet connections, using something like google image search and keywords to generate the pictures might work. ‘Redhead child’ immediately comes up with many images which are suitable for such a game.
Along the lines of replacing cartoons with concepts, I had also thought to replace images with sounds, bits of music, tastes, in the proper setting. I am able to explain to someone many details of an image if it is in front of me, even if it is abstract. I am less able to do this with something I can’t see. Explaining a bit of bird song, or a series of musical notes that are played by a certain instrument, where I lack familiarity, would be more intense and interesting (to me at least ^_^).
I’d expect learning to do wine tasting would be an easy way to get introduced to describing flavors. It’s something I’ve been considering for myself :)