Ideal Waste of Time

Here's a fun waste of time that I came across the other day. I've played with the physical 20Q toy in a store before; it's a little ball that will guess what you are thinking of by asking you 20 questions. Anyway, now there's a website version.

I thought about a potato, and then a rose. 20Q got them in under 20 questions.

I decided to think about an 8-track tape. It took 20Q more then 20 questions to get it, but I was impressed that it was schooled in retro technology.

My thoughts drifted to a duck-billed platypus. The closest 20Q got was to guess an echidna, which I think was pretty good. Duck-billed platypusses (platypi?) and echnidas are examples of egg-laying mammals. Egg-laying mammals are evolutionary relics; there are only three species around today, two of which are found in Australia. (I learned about all of this when I took a mammalian diversity course in university.)

Being the geek I am, I was very excited to see echidnas and playtpusses when I was in Australia. Here are pictures of the spiny echidna (taken at the Taronga zoo in Sydney) and a duck-billed playtpus (taken at the Sydney Aquarium).