The imitation game is analogous to a toe-stepping game, in which an interrogator puts his foot through an opening in a wall and tries to determine whether a man or woman stepped on his foot. A box of rocks linked to an electric eye can produce the same effect as toe-stepping, but not duplicate real human toe-stepping.
The Gunderson Argument "...what follows from the toe-stepping game situation surely is not that rocks are able to imitate (I assume no one would want to take that path of argument) but only that they are able to be rigged in such a way that they could be substituted for a human being in a toe-stepping game without changing any essential characteristics of the game...The parody comparison can be pushed too far. But I think it lays bare the reason why there is no contradiction in saying, 'Yes, a machine can play the imitation game, but it can't think." (Gunderson, 1964, p. 63).
Gunderson, Keith (1964) "The Imitation Game," in Anderson, A. R. (ed.) Minds and Machines, Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Prentice Hall.