After he described the rules, my immediate reaction was 'this is like mastermind'. Sure enough, further down the page:

  Other than that, in my research I came across a boardgame called Mastermind, which has been around since the 70s. This is a very similar premise - think of it as "Guess Who?" on hard mode.

Mastermind! What a great game. Played it for hours.

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-mastermind-box-cover...