Cool and simple ideas needed!

On Tue, 17 May 2005, Philipp Hachtmann wrote: It's been so long since I've seen it I hoep I can describe it... a hex dump (!) of it came with the SWTPC 6800. It's a guessing game. It uses a lot of text [so non-techies like it] but does no text processing or handling [so toggle-switch programmers like it]. It's D U M B. There is a table containing related datums: ANIMAL NAME // QUESTION TO ASK FISH DOES IT SWIM CAT DOES IT MEOW BIRD DOES IT HAVE WINGS You can build in a few animals to start. It builds this by asking yes/no questions, and occasionally asking for new data. It's reasonably clever-seeming for a tiny program. It codes up in a few hundred instructions. Human input is either raw text stored in a table, or Y or N for decisions. computer: ARE YOU THINKING OF AN ANIMAL (Y, N): person: [N exits or restarts] Y computer: DOES IT SWIM? person: N computer: DOES IT MEOW? person: Y computer: IS IT A CAT? person: Y computer: GREAT! <whitespace> computer: ARE YOU THINKING OF AN ANIMAL (Y, N): ... If you get to the end of questions ("swim? meow? wings?") with all NOs then it asks for new data: computer: WHAT ANIMAL WERE YOU THINKING OF? person: ORANGUTANG computer: WHAT WOULD BE A GOOD QUESTION TO ASK? person: DOES IT FLING TURDS AT GAWKING VISITORS computer: THANK YOU <whitespace> computer: ARE YOU THINKING OF AN ANIMAL (Y, N): ... computer: DOES IT FLING TURDS AT GAWKING VISITORS? person: Y computer: IS IT AN ORANGUTANG? ... Ad nauseum. With an adult audience, the questions/answers tend towards the sexual and scatalogical (duh). There's a grossly over complex version in some dialect of BASIC here: http://www.animalgame.com/play/misc/source.php HA HA! The home page http://www.animalgame.com/ *IS* the ANIMALS game! Now that's weird...