Another infectiously addictive and brilliant game made using Google's Web APIs, Guess-the-google was created by Grant Robinson in response to suggestions he received after creating his Montage-a-google, an equally impressive and veritable time-sink worthy of a review of its own.
Guess-the-google is a single-player game in which the object is to guess the search term used to fetch the montage of images that appears for each of ten (10) rounds of play. A twenty-second timer counts down each round, awarding a time bonus should you enter the correct term within the time limit.
Analysis: I prefer this game over the ESP Game that surfaced a few months ago, though I will admit that it lacks some of the excitement. The presentation is simple and straightforward, accessible and appealing. There is not much to dislike about the way Grant has assembled this game.
On the downside, when working with the Google API, the same search term will yield the same images time and time again. So, getting good at the game is just a matter of practice and becoming familiar with the images. With over a billion images to choose from, you would think that the same search term could yield thousands of montage variations. Also, players using slower computers may experience a slight delay when rendering the images to the screen, which can affect your score.
Overall, minor complaints. The game is very good, and loads of fun—especially when sharing the fun by collaborating with a friend.
Thanks go to Andy for the link. =)
Hmm, seems like an interesting idea, but the images don't come up for me. I doubt it's the link. Likely it's just my crappy comp. Great idea tho.
This is a suprisingly tense, fun game! I think it's much better realised than the ESP game. That kind of didn't work for me. The only way this could be improved is if there were more keywords. They tend to repeat after a game or two. But it's great!
kewl game
sweet game, repetitive
Lol, nice game :) Although its a bit laggy on my computer
~le sigh~ i've gotten up to 290... i suck... ~blech~
fun game tho! it's nice that sometimes the answer is in the pic... delhi? nadda clue... =p it works fine for me until i click out of the window, then go back in... after that it's about 1/2 the speed and i'm down to 7 seconds before i can even type! ahhh!
This is a fun, different game. However, after about 5 min., I couldn't type in my answer before the time ran out. I don't have a slow computer or connection. I had to give up.
It's frustrating that it doesn't tell you the correct answer when you don't get it right.
Without being able to say 'oh, yea! That's what it was!' there's no real fun in it for me.
Those scores on the top-10 list (typically 385 and above) are the result of cheating, which is surprisingly easy. Using the LiveHTTPHeaders plugin for Firefox, watch the outgoing image requests, notice the query term, and type it as fast as you can.
It's hard to guess for the right ones. But if it's easy, I can just guess it straight away. It involves time, so it's really a very exciting game. There was one time when I just left with the last second, and suprisingly I guess the word correctly!
I think my highest score for now is 178, so ashamed..
my best: 292
so proud of my self lol
398 my best score...
see the screeshot.. for proof...lol
http://img380.imageshack.us/img380/3144/guesszc5.jpg
@Dave:
I know for a fact that not all 385 and above scores are the result of cheating.
After roughly 3 ours of practicing (no, we don't have anything bettter to do ;) ) a friend of mine got a score of 386. He might be in the top-10 right now (JW; score 386).
I must admit he got just small words like:
- bark
- red
- dance
but he did not cheat!
It's a great game, too bad it gets repetitive after a while (even after 10 minutes)
I guess the game isn't working anymore?
It appears the game has moved. The links have been updated. Thank you *Jacob*! :D
Not everyone on the leaderboard cheats. I personally had a high score of 387 with the help of a friend, together we made it happen. I typed, he guessed. The day we did it, we were forth for the day.
i have the current 4th top score of the day
388
no cheating (i don't know how to)
although in a way i am... i've been playing for a few hours and i now know what a lot of them are
usually can type them in in 1 or 2 seconds
some i still can't get though
chesty
I type over 100 wpm and can't get 40 points .... I just got second place 387 just keep playing until you memorize them...still can't figure out the comic book one that starts with an "o"
Comic book one is easy if you go back to 3rd grade english/writing...and if you still can't figure it out here's the word you are looking for:
onomatopoeia
Yea. You don't have to cheat to get on the top scores board. If you play the game frequently, you'll know almost all of the words. It does involve some luck of getting shorter three letter words like:
red
war
compared to longer ones like:
onomatopoeia
latitude
my highest is 368, but it was a very good run of mine. No cheating necessary
Link broken...looks like the game no longer exists. Too bad, it was fun.
[Edit: The game still exists, it looks like the link just changed is all. Fixed. Thanks for the alert. -Jay]
Update