Games

A week ago I started playing the "I'm thinking of something" game to entertain a bored Matthew in the car. I didn't think a member of the video game generation would be very interested, but Matthew really got into it. In fact, he tries to start the game up again every time we get in the car now.

He doesn't understand how to "divide and conquer" the problem space by asking questions that eliminate broad swaths of possiblities at a time. So when he makes a wrong guess, I give him additional information of the sort he would get if he were to ask that sort of question. ("No, it's not a skateboard, but it does have four wheels.") Maybe this will point him in the right direction; I don't know. I do remember that it was a long time after my own father introduced me to this game that I caught on to that. Maybe that's something that comes later on in brain development.

Matthew is also extremely pleased to ask us his own questions. This is more tedious, because his questions are trivial and do not vary much. ("What is a number between three and five? What is Daredevil's real name?") At the extreme, he has asked the same question four times in one day -- twice of Rachel, and twice of me.

But hey, I'm glad he likes the game.