Hey Robot

Hey Robot is a hybrid game, played with smart speakers (Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant) and a deck of physical cards. The cards each have a single word or a celebrity name on their front, and a point value 1-3 on the back, with the number corresponding to the difficulty of the card (3 being hardest). Two individuals or two teams take turns and compete to see who can score 16 points first. The deck of cards is shuffled and 16 cards are laid out in a 4x4 grid, face down. A player or team scores a point by picking a card, turning it over to reveal the target word, and asking their smart speaker a question that cannot have the word or part of the word in it. If the smart speaker response contains the target word, the player scores the point value of the card. For instance with the word Tea, a 1 point easy word, one might ask, "What was the protest against taxation held in Boston Harbor that helped launch the Revolutionary War", and if the smart speaker responds with an answer that includes "Boston Tea Party" that player scores 1 point. A slightly simplified version of the game has been played repeatedly on The Tonight Show, with the host Jimmy Fallon challenging famous comedians like Tina Fey, John Mulaney, Ricky Gervais, Steve Martin and Martin Short, among others.