Estimation Questions for Family Game Night: Guess, Score, Then Measure

Most quiz games reward whoever knows the most, which at a family table usually means the same one or two people every time. Estimating is different. Nobody knows how many grains of rice are in a mug, and an eight-year-old's guess can beat a grandparent's. Reasoning out loud counts for more than memory, and the argument over whose method was best lasts longer than the game.

What's Your Guess? is built for exactly this kind of question: a real number nobody knows offhand, a guess, then the answer with the working and sources behind it. Here are a few ways to play it as a group, a fair way to score a table of mixed ages, and a set of questions about your own home that you can check on the spot.

The simplest format is one screen and one shared run, with the whole table as a team.

1. Read the question aloud, including the line underneath it and the unit in the answer box.
2. Everyone writes a guess on a slip of paper, without talking.
3. Turn the slips over together and line them up from lowest to highest.
4. Type in the middle guess.
5. Read the reveal, open How it adds up, and argue about who reasoned best.

The team's run lasts as long as each guess lands within ten times the answer, so set a target, such as beating last week's streak. Writing guesses in silence before anyone speaks matters more than it seems: it stops the most confident voice at the table from setting everyone's number, and it is why the middle guess so often beats most of the individual ones. The research behind that is in our piece on the wisdom of crowds.

To play competitively within the shared run, score each person's slip against the answer. The fair way is the way the game itself judges: by how many times off a guess is, not by how many units. Divide the bigger number by the smaller one.

Say the answer is 600. Grandma guessed 400, which is 1.5 times too low. Sam guessed 2,000, about 3.3 times too high. Dad guessed 150, four times too low. Grandma wins the round. Notice Sam and Dad, though: Sam missed by 1,400 and Dad by only 450, yet by ratio Sam's guess is the better of the two. Measured that way, 60 and 6,000 are equally far from 600, which is fair both to the player who thinks big and to the one who thinks small, and settles most arguments about whose miss was worse.

A simple points scheme that matches the game's own verdicts:

• 3 points within 2 times either way, the game's Close.
• 1 point within 10 times, enough to survive in the game.
• A bonus point for the closest guess at the table.

For younger players, a handicap keeps it competitive: let anyone under ten score 3 points anywhere within 10 times. Quite often they will not need it.

The board game Wits & Wagers made a whole game out of the idea that you do not need to know the answer to win, only to judge who is closest. You can borrow the idea.

Once the slips are lined up, give everyone two counters. Each player places their counters on whichever slips they think will turn out closest, their own or anyone else's. After the reveal, every counter on the winning slip scores a point. Now the player who never knows anything can still win by spotting that Grandma has a knack for weights, and the person who wrote a wild guess can hedge by backing someone else.

For a quieter evening, give each player their own run in turn and see who survives longest. The questions will differ between players, since every run is dealt at random, so luck plays a part; play two runs each and add them up to even it out. If two players tie, the end-of-run screen shows each run's Closest guess as a multiple, which makes a natural tiebreak.

If everyone plays on the same tablet, the game's "Best" record belongs to that device (or to whoever is signed in on it), so it becomes the family record. Beating it is a good reason to play again next week.

The game's questions are about the wider world. These are about your own house, and every one can be answered properly, with a tape measure, a scale, a timer or a bit of counting. Guess first, show the slips, then go and find out.

• How many grains of rice are in a mug of rice? Count the grains in a level teaspoon, then count how many teaspoons fill the mug.
• How many steps is it from the front door to the end of the street? Walk it, with someone counting.
• How long does a full kettle take to boil? Time it.
• How many coins are in the change jar? Weigh a mixed handful of 20 coins on a kitchen scale, weigh the lot, and divide.
• How many words are in the book on the bedside table? Count the words on one full line, the lines on a page and the pages, and multiply.
• How heavy is the dog? Weigh yourself holding it, then weigh yourself alone.
• How tall is the house? On a sunny day, measure your own shadow and the house's shadow at the same moment. Your height divided by your shadow, times the house's shadow, is its height.
• How many tiles are on the kitchen wall or floor? Count one row and one column, and multiply.
• How many peas are in a bag of frozen peas? Weigh a spoonful and count it, then weigh the bag.
• How many books are there in the whole house? Count one shelf, count the shelves, and check by counting a second room.
• How long can each person stand on one leg with their eyes shut? Everyone guesses their own time, then tries it. It is harder than it sounds.
• How many minutes did the family spend on phones yesterday? Most phones keep a screen-time count in their settings. Guess your own before you look.

The measuring is half the fun, especially for children, and it teaches the same lesson the game's working does: a big unknown number usually becomes a small sum once you split it into pieces.

• Start with a bracket. Before anyone writes a number, ask: is it nearer ten, a hundred or a thousand? Getting the right power of ten is most of the skill, and young children can do it.
• Let them read the reveal. "2.5 times too high" is a great sentence for an eight-year-old to work out loud.
• Give them the measuring jobs. Counting grains or timing the kettle gives them ownership of the answer.
• Cheer the in-range guesses. In the game, anything within ten times survives. A child who was four times too high has done well, and saying so keeps them playing.

If it is your first time with the game, a quick look at how a run works will save you working it out with an audience. Then pick a night, find some paper slips, and put the kettle on to time it.