Everybody knows the game "20 questions" in which someone chooses a figure (real or fiction) and the others need to guess who the figure is using only 20 right or wrong questions. Adapting it to the Internet looks trivial - all you need is a database of figures and questions. I already did something similar about 25 years ago, trying to guess an animal that my father/mother picked (in Basic!!!).
Well actually it is not that trivial - you need to have a very big database and find the correct questions to ask to be able to divide the vast information quickly enough so that you are able to guess the correct figure after only 20 questions.
Akinator (http://www.devinettor.com/#) does it incredibly well! I played it about 10 times until I succeeded to win (meaning he couldn't guess my figure, which by the way was Doug from the time tunnel...). In the homepage you can see the last 10 games it played, and it seems that the statistics are almost always 9 to 1 (i.e. 9 out of 10 games, Akinator succeeds).
You can also view the top characters that were picked from the beginning of the web site. Interestingly, this web site is played mostly by Israeli's - Bar Refaeli, Ninet Tayeb and Tzipi Livni are all in the top 10 ever... Apart from them you have You, your mother and Akinator, the 'always click on yes', 'always click on no' and 'always click on don't know'. The only non Israeli and actual named figure is Angelina Jolie. Interesting. Could it be that Brad Pit also plays here often?...
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