If you’re anything like JOE, you spend far too much time on Wikipedia, aimlessly drifting from one semi-related page to another. So why not play a game of it?
Wikipedia is one of the most addictive creations known to man, resting someone between crack cocaine and playing with bubblewrap. Hours go by for us JOE writers on Wikipedia every night. We simply can’t get enough, whether it’s of random articles packed with information compiled from worldwide users or the oddly comforting challenge of having staring contests with Jimmy Wales (he always wins).
Created by app developer Dan Hassin (who doesn’t have a Wikipedia page), Wiki Hunt – The Wikipedia Game is a clever reworking of the six degrees of seperation theory, namely that everyone is on average approximately six steps away from any other person on Earth. The game, however, switches up the theory to posit that every Wikipedia article is less than seven clicks away from any other article on the site. You can even choose the two articles yourself or let the app do so for you.
No this wasn’t us – in fact, we’re actually a little rubbish at Wiki Hunt
Sound difficult? It is, although a helpful counter on the bottom-left side of the screen tells you how many clicks have been made. If the link you’ve clicked on hasn’t showed up, it’s because it was a dead end. You can also search for phrases within articles and share your completed games via email or Twitter. Failing that, you can click solution and find which was the least amount of clicks needed to link Thorin Oakenshield from The Hobbit to the ‘Captain’ position in Cricket (4 clicks – Frodo Baggins/London/Cricket/Captain (Cricket).
The fun aspects of Wikipedia come from the realisation of just how much bizarre information is compiled on Wikipedia, particularly when you’re trying in vain to link two seemingly unrelated obscure targets. When you consider that each test is randomly generated and that the English Wikipedia site currently has over 3.5 million articles, the replayability is endless.
No article of Wiki Hunt can go by without a quick mention to a recent feature installed with the latest app update, ‘Six Clicks To Jesus’, which sends users to a random article and as you can guess, challenges them to find Jesus of Nazareth in a maximum of six clicks.
Ingenious, constantly surprising and admittedly released around eight months ago, we have no idea how Wiki Hunt managed to slip under our radar for so long. However, we compel every one of you to grab your phone, head to the app store, click purchase and pop in your iTunes password. After all, that too should take less than six clicks.
Wiki Hunt is available to download from the App Store for €1.59.
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