Is There a Two-Player Mode? How a Round vs the Computer Works

One player against the computer

The Guess Who? game on this site has no two-player or pass-and-play mode. The main menu has a Play button, a sound toggle and a credits button, and every round is you against the computer, which the game labels CPU. If two people want to share it, the fairest way is described at the end of this post.

Starting a round

After you press Play, a message asks you to choose your character. Click any of the 24 faces on the big board and it becomes your secret character. It appears in the panel to the right of the board, with the computer's pick shown below it as a face-down card. From then on the big board belongs to your search: it shows the faces the computer's secret could be.

Your turn

The game tells you to choose a question in the box below. Use the left and right arrows to scroll through the questions, then press OK. The board updates on its own: every face the answer rules out is darkened, and a GOOD, GREAT or AMAZING message pops up if the cut was big enough. You do not flip cards by hand and you cannot flip one back.

The computer's turn

About a second and a half after your question, a CPU TURN panel appears with the computer's question and two buttons, yes and no. You have to answer truthfully. The game checks your answer against your character, and if it is wrong a wrong-answer mark flashes and the panel stays open until you give the right one. So you cannot bluff, and you cannot lose a round by misreading your own card.

The small grid of 24 mini faces in the bottom right corner is the computer's board. Each truthful answer greys out the faces it has ruled out, so you can always see how close it is to finding you.

How the computer chooses its questions

The computer does not hunt for the best split. Its code picks one of the faces still lit on its mini board at random, then asks a question about a trait that face has and that it has not asked before. That makes its play uneven: sometimes it asks a rare trait that removes two faces, sometimes it lands a big cut. It also means its questions tell you very little about your own search, so focus on your board rather than trying to read its guesses.

How a round ends

Nobody presses a guess button. You win the moment your board is down to one face: the screen shows CONGRATULATIONS!!!, reveals the computer's character and adds 500 points. The computer wins when its mini board is down to one face, and you see GAME OVER with your character. The end panel shows your final score, and closing it takes you back to the menu. The settings button in the top right corner opens the sound toggle and an exit button, which leaves a round early after an ARE YOU SURE? check.

Sharing it between two people

Since there is no versus mode, two players can take turns playing full rounds against the computer and compare the FINAL SCORE each time. The score depends on how much each of your questions cuts the board, plus the bonus for winning, so the player who asks the sharper questions usually comes out ahead.