Use Peter Answers
If you love to play tricks on your friends or family members, lead them to a computer and introduce them to Peter. Have them choose a question, type it in, and Peter will amaze everyone in the room. But you alone know the key to Peter's success! Here is how to do it.
Steps
- Visit Peter Answers. There you’ll see two text boxes: "Petition" and "Question."
- Ask someone for a question. This is what you'll ask Peter.
- If you already know the answer, proceed to the next step.
- If it's a question you don't know the answer to, you can ask them for the answer, telling them that if they say the question and answer out loud, Peter will hear them with his psychic powers. If you don't know the answer, you won't be able to follow the next step, and Peter will answer with a very generic statement like "You shall not doubt of me at all, keep trusting on me and soon I'll answer." In other words, the trick won't work!
- In the petition box, press . and then type the answer. Pressing the period key will clue the site into the fact that you’re typing the secret answer, causing each letter you type to appear as part of the phrase, “Peter, please answer the following question.” Since, for this example, the question will be “Why is wikiHow the best website?”, we will now type, “.Because it is a group effort” into the petition box.
- Press . repeatedly until you reach a logical break in the automated question. In our example, the secret response only takes us as far as “Peter, please answer the foll”; to get the phrase to say “Peter, please answer the following,” simply press the period key five more times. The extra periods will not appear in your secret answer.
- Note that the full question reads “Peter, please answer the following question” – though you’re welcome to stop anywhere that makes sense before that.
- Press : to move the cursor to the question box. This is essential because it signals you’re your secret answer is done. Moreover, without the colon, you will not be able to proceed to the question box.
- Type the question normally.
- Press ? to submit the question. You may have to agree to a liability release before you can move to the next step.
- Watch for Peter's answer. He should display the response that you typed. If your audience doesn't know that you typed in the answer, they will be flabbergasted. You can probably keep them amazed for quite a while as long as they don't start paying close attention to what your fingers are actually typing.
Tips
- You can also tell your viewers to stare at the screen so that they can correct any spelling errors that you might make.
- Peter will accept and display answers that are longer than the petition phrase, but it will be pretty obvious something is up if you continue to type after the screen displays the entire petition phrase. Nothing more will show up once you've reached the end of the phrase.
- Peter is only as accurate as you are, so if you enter a typo, Peter will answer with a typo, and people will get suspicious pretty quickly. If you think you made a mistake, you can backspace and start again at any point. If you delete all of what you entered, press Clear and start over; remember to enter a period again to signal to Peter that you're entering the answer. (Note that deleting everything you entered is not a good idea because people will wonder why you're erasing a perfectly good petition.)
- If you're typing a short answer, you can save time by completing only the shorter petition phrase (“Peter:”, “Peter, please:”, or “Peter, please answer:”).
- Also, do not type . twice!
- As soon as you type a colon ":" the cursor will automatically jump to the question box, even if you haven't finished typing out the petition. This will likely ruin the illusion, so don't accidentally type that colon too soon.
- If somebody asks a question that you don't know the answer to, it is best to just type "I cannot answer the following question."
- When you're typing your answer in the petition box try not to make any mistakes, and try not to use the backspace as it could potentially ruin your answer.
- When you're typing in the petition box, it helps to NOT look at the screen, because it can throw you off and make you forget what you're typing. Instead, look down as you type the answer. Only look up after you've typed the period to check how much of the query is finished.
