Botticelli (game)

Botticelli is a guessing game which requires the players to have a good knowledge of biographical details of famous people. The game has several variants, but the common theme is that one person or team thinks of a famous person, reveals their initial letter, and then answers yes/no questions to allow other players to guess the identity.

The game takes its name from the archetypal question, "Did you paint a picture of Venus rising?"

1 How to play
2 Variants
- 2.1 Revision
3 Sources

How to play

The main variant described here is commonly played at Cambridge.

One player (the chooser) is selected to think of a famous person (the identity). This person should be someone the chooser is comfortable answering biographical questions about, and someone the chooser is very confident that the other players will all have heard of; obscure identities make for frustrating game play, especially with young players. Fictional characters are acceptable, but can present certain difficulties. In some contexts, a non-famous person with whom all the players are familiar may be acceptable.

The chooser then announces the initial letter of the name by which the person is usually known; for non-fictional characters, this is usually the last name. For example, if the chooser chose Sandro Botticelli, then the initial letter would be B. For the purposes of phrasing questions and answers, the chooser adopts the chosen identity.

The game has two modes — direct mode and indirect mode — and starts in indirect mode.

Indirect Mode

In indirect mode, players (the guessers) take turns (usually informally, but sometimes clockwise from the last guesser, and initially from the chooser's left) to think of someone with the designated initial letter. Note that these guesser choices do not have to conform to any other information acquired about the chooser's identity (e.g. male, non-fiction, still alive). The guesser then asks the chooser a yes/no question using some detail of the guesser's choice. For example, if the letter is B then the guesser might choose Brer Rabbit and ask, "Were you born and bred in the briar patch?" At this point, the chooser has three possible responses:

"No, I am not Brer Rabbit." — The chooser guesses the guesser's choice. Note that the chooser doesn't need to get the same answer, merely one that has the right initial and meets the criterion in the guesser's question. The chooser may exercise this option (naming another character) even if the chooser's identity meets the criterion (and hence, even if the chooser's identity is the same as the guessers' choice). If the guesser (or a majority of players) agrees that the chooser's answer meets the criteria then the game remains in indirect mode. The guesser need not reveal the choice in this case.
"I don't know." — The chooser can't think of someone meeting the criteria. The guesser reveals the answer. If the chooser (or a majority of players) agrees that the question and answer are valid, then the game changes to direct mode. Note that the bar for guesser choices is lower than that for the chooser's identity; it is not essential for the chooser to have heard of the person, or to know the relevant biographical detail, but guessers should not deliberately exploit this provision. The ideal guesser question is one where the chooser says "Doh! I should have gotten that." when the answer is revealed. If the guessers' choice is the chooser's identity, then the guesser wins.
"Yes, I'm Brer Rabbit." — The chooser's identity meets the criterion of the guesser's question, and the chooser cannot think of anyone else who satisfies it. The guesser wins.

Note that guessers can use indirect mode to guess the chooser's identity directly (e.g. "Are you Brer Rabbit?").

Direct Mode

In direct mode, the guesser whose choice enabled the mode switch gets to ask a series of yes/no questions about the chooser's identity. The designated guesser gets to choose which questions are asked in this mode, but may accept input from other guessers. Strict adherence to this rule varies.

Direct mode continues so long as the yes/no questions are answered in the affirmative. As soon as a question is answered in the negative, the mode switches back to indirect. For this reason, it is a good idea to phrase questions so that the likely answer is "Yes" or, equivalently, where an answer of "No" will convey the maximum information. All players must be careful in the interpretation of negative questions; it is a good idea for the chooser to restate the revealed fact as part of the answer.

Example questions and answers for direct mode:

"Are you male?" → "Yes, I am male."
"Are you not a politician" → "No, I am a politician."
"Are you not an artist in the broadest sense of the word?" → "Yes, I am not an artist."
"Are you not Yul Brynner" → "No, I am Yul Brynner".

The last example is a case where the guesser has realised what the chooser's identity is, and phrases a very narrow negative question to confirm it. In this case, the guesser wins. Note that it is important for the positive/negative phrasing of such direct guesses for the guesser to remember which mode the game is in.

If the chooser doesn't know the answer to a direct mode question, or the question does not permit a clear-cut yes/no answer, then the chooser answers as accurately as possible, and the game remains in direct mode. In extreme cases, the chooser may (with appeal to all players) reject an unreasonable direct mode question entirely (for example, because it is not plausibly a yes/no question). There are some conventions for answering contextually inappropriate direct mode questions; for example, fictional characters are usually deemed to be dead if and only if their death is recorded (although Kenny and Sherlock Holmes are exceptions to this rule).

Winning

The game ends when a guesser successfully determines the chooser's identity. That guesser then becomes the chooser, a new identity and letter are chosen and the game starts again in indirect mode. If the successful guess was suggested by a non-designated guesser in direct mode, then it is normal courtesy for the designated guesser to defer to the other player.

If all guessers give up before winning, then the chooser reveals the identity. The guessers then determine (by majority) whether the choice was a good one (that is, they should all have known of the character and the chooser's answers in direct mode were reasonably accurate). The role of chooser then remains with the same player, or passes to another player (e.g. clockwise) as appropriate. It is considered bad form for one guesser to hold out after everyone else has given up.

Variants

Revision

This variant is useful as a course-work revision technique. Two teams have open book access to the same corpus, and one team (determined by a trivia question related to the corpus) chooses a character. The other team then asks yes/no questions to determine the choice. After ten "No" answers (indicated using the ten letters in the word "Botticelli"), the guessing team loses. Points are awarded as a function of the number of "No" answers.

Sources

Categories: Guessing games