How to play It Took
It Took asks one kind of question: how many does it take? How many helium balloons to lift a cat, how many AA batteries to boil a kettle, how many ice cubes to cool a cup of tea.
A round, step by step
- Read the question and the assumption. Every experiment states its assumptions before you guess, for example "standard 11-inch party balloons at sea level, about 10 g of lift each". No trick questions.
- Slide to your guess. The slider covers everything from 1 to a million. Use the plus and minus buttons to fine-tune, or tap the number to type it.
- Try it. The experiment runs with your number. The balloons lift off or not, the kettle boils or not. You learn whether you had too few, too many or just the right amount.
- Use your three tries. Each try narrows it down: ranges you have already ruled out are marked on the slider.
A guess counts as a hit when it is within 10% of the real answer (or exact, when the answer is a small number).
Points and ranks
| Hit on | Points |
|---|---|
| First try | 3 |
| Second try | 2 |
| Third try | 1 |
| No hit | 0, and the real amount plays out |
Five experiments make a day, so the best possible score is 15. Your total gives you a rank: Back to the lab, Wild guesser (3), Good hunch (6), Sharp eye (9), Lab genius (12) and Mad scientist (15).
When you are done, the share button copies one colored square per experiment, from green for a first-try hit to red for a miss, so friends can compare without spoilers.
Tips
- Use the assumption. It gives you the key number. If each balloon lifts 10 g, a 2 kg object needs 2,000 ÷ 10 = 200 balloons.
- Get the order of magnitude first. Is the answer closer to 10, 100 or 10,000? Most misses are a factor of ten.
- Let the first try teach you. If the result says "way too many", jump a lot lower rather than nudging.
Curious where the numbers come from? Read the science behind each experiment.