What is “barkóba” in Hungarian?

Barkóba (also written barkochba) is Hungary’s national guessing game: one player thinks of something, the others may ask only questions answerable with igen or nem. It opens with the ritual line gondoltam valamit — “I’ve thought of something.” Every Hungarian child knows the rules, and the word works as a verb too: barkóbázunk, “we’re playing twenty questions.”

The name goes back to Simon bar Kochba, who led the second-century Jewish revolt against Rome — by way of a legend invented for a play staged in Budapest around 1900, in which he questions a messenger whose tongue has been cut out and who can only nod or shake his head. The legend is fiction; the name stuck, and it is a Hungarian peculiarity — most languages just call the game “twenty questions.” The joke here is a barkóba between two sailors: Szőrös? — Nem. — Akkor rum.