No, if anything I was disappointed to read within 20% was correct! (I played it before reading your post!)
I have an idea for a gameplay that I think I would enjoy more:
- If the first guess is within a factor of sqrt(10), then you win.
- If not, you are given two choices for the second guess: Up or down.
- Up and down are 10x higher and lower guesses (making them adjacent ranges to the first guess).
- If the second guess is wrong, you lose. No more guesses.
I wrote 10x and sqrt(10) to make a game literally about orders of magnitude, but you could of course you smaller numbers, like 4x and sqrt(4), to make it harder.
However, I did find a solution to bring the focus a bit away from the binary search/bisection.
Namely, the game now shows a hint after the second incorrect guess. For example the hint "The US covers 1.87% of the Earth's surface." is displayed for the question about what percentage of the Earth's surface is land.
This of course lets you, just as you wanted, rethink the original question once more now in light of new information.
text: I think I found a solution to bring the focus a bit away from the binary search and would greatly appreciate feedback from you.
The game now shows a hint after the second incorrect guess. For example the hint "The US covers 1.87% of the Earth's surface." is displayed for the question about what percentage of the Earth's surface is land.
How does the new information received through the hint impact your guess and assumptions? help