Last Updated on January 25, 2024 by Gamesver Team and JC Franco
Nothing brings back those nostalgic feelings than playing an old board game such as Guess Who?. As kids, this game was widely popular, and my siblings and I loved playing it. Being a two-player game, it brought out our inner competitive nature, but in a wholesome way!
The premise of the game is simple. You need two players to begin the game, with each player holding a yellow card with a person’s picture on it. The picture matches one of the other cards on the board, and the object of the game is simply to guess what card or character the other player has first in order to win.
Guess Who? has pretty much no age restrictions and is a rather easy game to explain when you compare it to the likes of other classic board games such as Monopoly. However, winning a game of Guess Who? is easier said than done. Asking the right questions and using the process of elimination and deduction are important attributes to have if you plan on winning and beating your rivals.
Playing Guess Who? can even help improve deductive reasoning, social skills, memory recognition, and more, especially in children. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at the many benefits and advantages of playing Guess Who?.
1. Learning From Our Mistakes
Making mistakes is essentially being human. However, so is learning from your mistakes. When playing Guess Who?, kids often make mistakes as they are just beginning to learn the game.
2. Not Giving Up
Despite constant mistakes, kids likewise have a never-ending passion for games, and this passion is exploited for their own benefit in the form of never giving up. When playing Guess Who?, it all boils down to who guesses right. One wrong guess leads to another and ultimately results in a loss.
3. Being A Good Sport
Humans are competitive in nature, and oftentimes it’s our competitiveness with each other (even our closest friends) that sends us down a spiral that isn’t easy to recover from. Guess Who? teaches kids from an early age how sportsmanship works.
Taking turns, respecting each other’s time taken to draw clues, etc., are all qualities that teach us the importance of being a good sport and having respect for your opponent.
4. Color Distinction
The cards in Guess Who? consists of several different male and female characters of various skin tones.
Each character possesses unique qualities when it comes to their physical appearance. Some characters have blond hair, while others have black/brown hair. Some characters may have blue eyes, while others may have green eyes. As such, kids can learn color pallets faster, as the consequences of getting their colors mixed up can result in a certain loss.
5. Learning Facial Expressions
The game allows kids to understand different facial expressions. For example, they can learn to understand the difference between a sad face and a happy face, an angry face or even a frightened one.
By learning the differences between even the slightest facial expressions, kids can become a lot more intuitive when it comes to reading other people.
6. Descriptive Skills
Kids have a hard time developing a sentence, let alone the sentence being a descriptive one. This changes when playing Guess Who?, though.
Describing features such as big or small faces, facial expressions, and colors can help develop a child’s descriptive skills. This is a huge part of our education, as descriptive reasoning is how we survive in the world.
7. Improving Articulation
Kids often have a hard time asking questions to which the answer can be yes or no. They always make questions more complex than they need to be. Being direct is the way to go, and the line of questioning often changes from “what” to “are” or “is“. An example could be going from “what color are your eyes” to “are your eyes black“?.
8. Making Room For Logical Thinking
When playing Guess Who?, kids often wonder which character they need to put down and which to keep. After playing a couple of rounds, logical thinking develops even further. For example, if the mystery face has a hat, the kid will automatically put down characters that don’t have hats.
9. Practicing Strategy
Strategies such as asking if the other person’s character is a girl or a boy, for example, are good starting points as these types of questions can quickly eliminate a bunch of options getting you closer to the answer.
10. Asking Questions
The purpose of the game is quite simple; figure out who the opponent has chosen amongst the characters on the board through a series of questions. This questioning ability helps kids become more knowledgeable, as the more questions they ask, the more answers they get.
This process likewise makes them more respectful and mature, and rather than just “wanting” something, they’ll instead “ask for it”.
11. Answering Questions
Being smart about your answers and not giving too much information out all at once is part of the fun. You want the other player to ask as many questions as possible to give you as much time possible to guess their card. Thus, keep answers short and to the point.
12. Comparisons
There is no making random decisions in Guess Who?. Calculating the move you need to make is extremely important. This teaches kids to look at their choices and use the power of knowledge and deduction to knock down more of the opponents’ characters. It’s guided decision-making like this that helps kids grow into much more responsible adults.
13. Teaching Identity
When it comes to noticing the distinct facial features of a character, kids don’t have much idea of different physical appearances as they haven’t met as many people as adults.
In Guess Who?, a kid might find a person with glasses and 3 others with white hair. They might even find some characters to be darker-toned than others or have different-colored eyes. This teaches them how to identify people and, more importantly, teaches them how it is ok to look different.
14. Working Together
Working together from the start is important for kids. When kids work together in Guess Who?, they start to enjoy each other’s company and get along well. Such team-building exercises are a great way to get along with fellow classmates that you don’t normally get along with.
15. Listening
Kids that play Guess Who? eventually tend to become good listeners to those around them. As the game relies on information gathered through verbal communication, listening carefully is key when it comes to making the right call.
16. Confidence
Nowadays, there are several kids that are too shy to even look towards another person, let alone make eye contact. Guess Who? allow kids to achieve confidence at a very young age when they question their opponents, judge whether they are bluffing or not through eye contact, and learn to read body language. This helps build up confidence and social skills.
17. Family Bonding
Guess Who? can be the perfect family bonding game for kids. The game is relatively simple to understand, and with little age limits, even the youngest and oldest members of your family can partake and have a great time. This soothing yet competitive game can help bring families together and get kids to be a lot more involved in family matters.
18. Social Skills
Learning the secrets behind skills like sportsmanship, patience and teamwork are extremely important for a kid. Guess Who? is the perfect game to do that while also giving kids a chance to get to know each other and develop social skills that can be used outside of the game.
19. Increased Attention Span
Like Monopoly, Guess Who? also takes its sweet time to wrap up if you decide to play a whole match. Kids nowadays often have their attention drawn toward digital devices. Guess Who? can change that as it helps keep kids immersed in the game rather than staring at their screens.
Final Thoughts
Guess Who? is a fun and entertaining board game for kids. The sense of competition and relatively short game time makes it an awesome past-time for kids while also providing many important benefits, advantages, and life lessons that can help kids get smarter and more intuitive.
If you haven’t played Guess Who?, you should definitely give it a try. All you need is one more player, and the game is on!
This article was co-authored by our team of in-house and freelance writers, and reviewed by our editors, who enjoy sharing their knowledge about their favorite games with others!
JC Franco
JC Franco serves as a New York-based editor for Gamesver. His interest for board games centers around chess, a pursuit he began in elementary school at the age of 9. Holding a Bachelor’s degree in Business from Mercyhurst University, JC brings a blend of business acumen and creative insight to his role. Beyond his editorial endeavors, he is a certified USPTA professional, imparting his knowledge in tennis to enthusiasts across the New York City Metropolitan area.