The Wiki Game
My wife introduced me to my new favorite game tonight. It goes by many names including The Wiki Game or Wikiracing. Basically you try to get from one random page on Wikipedia to another random target page using only the hyperlinks within each page’s articles. In some variants your objective is to get there in as few clicks as possible and in others the objective is to get there in as little time as possible.
There’s a golf-like game called 5 Clicks to Jesus (or 5 Clicks to Hitler) in which you try to get from random pages to the page about Jesus Christ in as few clicks as possible. Each random start page represents a new par-five “hole” and the game is scored like golf so you can get birdies, eagles, bogeys, etc.
Here is my challenge to you: Try to get from the Wikipedia page on ferromagnetism to the page about Francis of Assisi in as few clicks as possible. You can use any of the hyperlinks in the articles including the “See Also” section but not the “Categories” table that shows up at the bottom of the desktop version of Wikipedia.
If you end up on some long convoluted path that’s not heading in the right direction or if you get stuck, feel free to start over.
Post in the comments how many hops it took you to get there and if you’d like, post the path you took from one page to the other.
For random thoughts about how to automate a Wiki Game brute force search, read my post entitled Wiki Game Musings.