What is the fastest way to guess a word that someone is thinking by asking yes/no questions?

Question

For example, let's say I'm thinking of the word "sponge." A friend has to figure out what the word is through a series of yes or no questions. He can ask if the word is edible, to which I would say "No" (which is what most people would say, which is hard to formalize). Obviously, my friend can ask if the word is "potato", but if information theory has taught us anything it is that those kind of questions are the worst in terms of the information they give. I can't really formalize what I mean by a "word" (the string "abc" isn't a word, after all) other than that it has to be something that has a clear definition if you search it up on Google. What I'm asking for is a way to make something like this more "binary searchable" to figure out the word with as few questions as possible. If anyone can provide some general insight to this problem that'd be great.

Answer 1

Take a dictionary. Open it in the middle, see what's the first word on that page and ask “In the dictionary, does that word appear before […]?” Then you will know in which half of the dictionary that word is. Then see what's the word which is in the middle of that region and as k the similar question concerning that word. And so on.