Hey Robot is a party game that tests how smart Alexa is

Sometimes, it can feel impossible to get what you want from a smart assistant. That problem is the premise of a new board game called Hey Robot, which tasks players with getting Alexa or another digital assistant to say a specific word before their opponents can.

The gameplay works much like Taboo: players are given a selection of words, and they have to figure out what they can ask a smart assistant that will get it to recite the word without saying any form of the word in their question.

“The game works because the devices don’t work that great,” says Frank Lantz, one of the game’s creators. “It’s very funny. You think, ‘Oh this is going to be easy. How hard can this be?’ But that’s the thing. It actually can be very challenging, and...

Continue reading…