This evening we played a short round of the provocatively titled game Guess Who I Am. Presumably the designers of this game gathered around in their boardroom, or garage, and, with reference to the law firm that represents Hasbro, cheered defiantly “LET THEM COME!” One can only imagine those fine litigators did, indeed, come.

Anyway, simple game. Everybody dons a pair of annoyingly ill-fitting cardboard spectacles. The other players then write the name of a famous something-or-other in non-permanent ink on the white part at the front of the spectacles. Actually, they probably do this before you put them on, that makes more sense. From there each player asks a series of increasingly pointed questions until they deduce the something-or-other written on the front of their spectacles, or they don’t… nobody seems to care one way or the other.

Monty did not appear to immediately grasp the broader purpose of the game, or he did but was unwilling to put forth the effort to develop a cogent questioning strategy to achieve his objectives. Monty wanted to decide on his own something-or-other. I said no. This was foolish, particularly given it was after 1930hrs. Monty cried, I relented. Monty decided on a rather obscure character from the Dog Man book series known as ‘Ratterfly’. In carefully formed letters I penned the word, pausing briefly to wonder out loud if Ratterfly has one t or two – it’s two. I don’t know why I went to such effort; Monty knew what I was writing, and also he can’t read.

As Monty pulled the absurdly large spectacles up over his ears and held them there with both hands he had one last stipulation for me and Milo; even though he knew the something-or-other, and we knew that he knew, we had to pretend we didn’t know. He would do likewise. We all agreed.

Monty’s first three questions went like this:

“Am I a character from Mario? No.”

“Am I in a movie? No.”

“Do I wear a cape? No.”

Milo expertly probed his way towards ‘Pikachu’ with precision questions, almost zero wastage. I blundered my way around the pseduo-verse, hapless, making zero progress.

“Am I in a movie? No.”

“Am I famous? No.”

“Am I a cartoon? No.”

“Am I real? No.”

“Am I alive? No.”

“Am I a thing? Sort of.”

Confounded I returned my attention to Monty’s charade.

“Am I rainbow coloured? No.”

“Am I from the Land Before Time? No.”

“Am I a cat? No.”

“Can I fly? Yes.”

Meanwhile, Milo went from cartoon to Pokemon to electric type to Pikachu with impressive speed and whipped off his specs with a grin.

Shortly thereafter Monty triumphantly asked “Am I Ratterfly?” to which he received an affirmative answer. Coming in a close second was, for me, impressive commitment to his subterfuge.

Oh and by the way I was butt, not ‘a butt’, just ‘butt’ (although spelled ‘but’); the fleshy amusing kind. Seemed a little niche but at least it gave me an excuse for coming last.

Monty demanded a second round. This time he saved some time and wrote his own something-or-other – he chose 22 slightly wiggly Ls. He got it on the third guess.