Every reply the ball can give you, grouped by what it actually means. Fourteen lean yes, six refuse to commit, and seven lean no.
Just over half the pool leans yes, which is deliberate. The original toy was weighted the same way, and it is the reason a shake feels encouraging rather than like a coin flip.
These are the ones people complain about, and they are the most useful ones on the list. A stalled answer sends you back to the question, which is usually where the real work is.
Fewer nos than yeses, and the harshest of them still stops short of an instruction. The ball declines; it does not lecture.
The odds
Because the pool is weighted rather than evenly split, a single shake lands positive roughly half the time, negative about a quarter of the time, and non-committal the rest. Plain “Yes” and plain “No” appear more often than any of the longer phrasings, which is why repeat shakes tend to settle into blunt one-word answers.
Two shakes in a row can contradict each other. That is not a bug — every shake draws fresh from the same pool with no memory of the last one.
Ask the ball → Free, instant, no sign-up. 27 answers, one shake.This one has 27: 14 that lean positive, 6 that are non-committal, and 7 that lean negative. The classic plastic toy had 20, weighted in roughly the same proportion.
There are seven: I wouldn't bet on it, My answer is no, Everything I've got says no, Not looking great, Unlikely, 80% No, and a plain No.
Non-committal answers exist to break the loop where you keep shaking for the reply you want. Six of the 27 replies stall rather than answer, and the useful move is to go back and sharpen the question.
Yes. Each shake picks from the weighted pool at random with no memory of previous shakes, so asking the same question twice can produce two different answers.