Looking for some late night laughs? Want to stretch the old noodle? Join us on the 220 MHz Guys & Gals Nightcrawlers net Friday’s at 0600 UTC. (That’s Thursday at midnight central time.) for GuessWhat?— the most needlessly complicated trivia game ever made for ham radio. (Of course, come on out every night for the net, but you’ll get GuessWhat? on the Friday morning net.)

Looking for next week’s quiz themes, the “Game Changer” question, and maybe a few answer hints? Well, check below and check back often. We’ll be posting more on this site before you know it. The game is ever changing, a barrel of laughs, and always needlessly complicated. Looking forward to hearing you check in.

The Winners’ Circle

Each week we celebrate the winner of GuessWhat? who is awarded a very nice frameable certificate as proof to friends and family that, yes, indeed, they are this week’s GuessWhat? Winner (the “GWW”). The GWW also has the privilege of choosing the next week’s game play category.

How to Play the Game

You want to know how to play? Well, you’re guess is as good as mine! The rules are ever changing and always complicated, and that’s part of the fun, of course. Actually, you don’t really need to know anything to play; just tune into the Night Crawlers Net each Thursday around midnight (Friday, 0600 UTC) and we’ll explain the rest. But if you’re as nerdy as we are, you can check out our current “loose” gameplay rules right here.

The game involves about 20 questions, or so, doled out out one at a time over the course of three game play rounds—The Take a Guess Round, the Double-Take Round, and the Game Changer Round. Each is described below.

Round 1: Take a Guess

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In the “Take a Guess” round each player is given a question. When you get yours, think it over and consider your options: 1: You can answer unassisted for five points. 2: You can request some answer choices for a possible three points. 3: You can use a lifeline, which would bring the question value down to one point should you get it right, but if you get it wrong, you lose a point and everyone else gets one. Life lines include Ask a Ham, Pick 2, or a Swap-a-Roo (a new question drawn from the GuessWhat? realm of randomness).

Round 2: Double-Take

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Now things get a little more interesting. In the “Double-Take” round you can take double the points for each question, but you’ve got to earn it. The twists come quick and the turns are sharp. When you get your question, consider these options: 1: You can answer your question unassisted for ten points. Note there are no multiple choice questions in the Double-Take round. 2: Instead of answering the question, you can choose to spin the Wheel of Chance, where who knows what you might get—good fortune, bad fortune, or maybe a GuessWhat? challenge you won’t soon forget. While there are no multiple choice questions in the “Double-Take” round, sometimes you will find clues to the answers on this very page. Look for the word cloud graphic, give it a click to enlarge it, and see some words there that might put you on the right track for the answers. Consider it a “word bank.” The answers are in there, you just have to find them and match them with the right question. Also, you know never what kind of gameplay/scoring variations the game master might thrown in on a given night (bonus point opportunities, etc.).

Round 3: The Game Changer

The final round in of GuessWhat? is something we like to call the “Game Changer.” The game changer is a riddle or lateral thinking puzzle. We read it at the top of the game, you can always find published to this page each Monday in preparation for the week’s game, and we read it again at during the Game Changer round when it’s time to answer. This is a variable point-value question where participants get to wager a number of their points on the question. You have to be strategic here, as your wager and your answer can turn the tables; it can change the game. To make this fair, we will leave it up to the Wheel of Chance to see who gets first shot at the Game Changer after all the bets are in. If this randomly selected person does not get the correct answer they will lose their wagered points, and we will simply work our way down the check-in list from that person and then back to the top as needed. The first person to get it correct, earns the points that they wagered and the game is over–unless there’s a tie. Then we make up some more random rules on the fly to sort it out—all in good fun and never boring.

Game Changer Riddle: Guess the Grub!

Name the food where you remove the outside, cook the inside, eat the outside, throw away the inside.

See Some Hints if You Must

We’re going to make you work for these hints. They are printed upside down, so either learn to read upside down, try standing on your head, or turn your computer monitor around 🙂

1. This is a summertime favorite.
2. Pick some up at your local farmstand.
3. Goes great with a little butter and some celery salt.
4. Err, you’ve got a little something stuck in your teeth.

Behind the Scenes with the GuessWhat? Team

KD9LGI, K9ACM, & Briggs (just K9)Your GuessWhat? creative team is Mike K9ACM and Aidan KD9LGI. We find it a lot of fun to put the game together for you each week. Mike generally curates the questions and does the background research. Aidan is our Game Master and asks the tough questions. He’s also our resident graphic Alec the GuessWhat? Smart Boxdesigner and is the talent behind the custom made GWW winners’ certificates. Briggs (our 60lb Australian Cattle dog) provides moral support and occasional sound effects. Other sound effects come directly to you via our custom made sound FX box pictured here. He is Alec the GuessWhat? smart box, otherwise known as Smart Alec. We like to call him Don. Don was a neat little building project. Good fun with a soldering gun, as they say. (Does anyone say that?) When Don is offline and on vacation, we go old school and create sound effects using any number of kazoo, spinning noise makers, call bells, and DIY echo tubes—all analog in the spirit of old-timey radio show style. We like to call this GuessWhat? unplugged. Tune in one of these days, and you just might catch such a special unplugged edition. Hope to hear you out there. Study up!