3° of Wikipedia, 360° of Head Spinning [iPhone Game Review]

(written by guest author Tim Giron. follow Tim on Twitter @timgiron)

3 Degrees Of Wikipedia iPhone Game

I consult the Wikipedia all the time for fun facts, always verifying the crowd-sourced info before citing it anywhere else. When I heard there was a game based around the information on this well traveled site, I figured I’d give it a look. At first blush, the game sounds interesting: connect one Wikipedia page to another by finding the intermediate page that links to the second one AND that the first one links to. That’s right, you are finding the middle link in a chain before someone says "You are the weakest link!".

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As an example, one problem goes Pig -> ? -> Economy. It took me quite a while to find "Even-toed ungulate" as the joining page, and I have a Bacon number of 4 (I just looked it up and no, I’m not gonna tell you how I connect to Kevin Bacon because I am not a name dropper unless some cash is going to exchange hands). What chance do others have of completing these puzzles in the normal and customary 24 hour day?

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Much like Wikipedia itself, the puzzles, here called problems, are crowd-sourced. Have a great idea for a chain? Submit it and as others try to solve it they will be given the opportunity to rate the "enlightenment" of the problem and its corresponding answer. I was going to submit the problem Tim Giron -> ? -> One Billion Dollars, then I realized that I actually had to know the answer ahead of time to submit it. And here I thought I had figured out a way to let all of you give me a hand with this personally important issue. I know what you are thinking, "but Tim, you don’t even have a Wikipedia entry" to which I would reply "that is a minor setback for a motivated individual".

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After several rounds, however, the game began to feel a bit less engaging. Much like a multiple choice question on a Junior High science test, for some pages the answer is readily apparent. Other times, the pages are so chock full of links that you will wade in with both feet and get stuck in the muck.

There are a dizzying array of achievements to be won, most of which encourage you to submit lots of puzzles and then get your friends to feel enlightened by them. If you are a Wikipedia junkie (or perhaps an even-toed ungulate), you will probably find this game fun for a short time. At 99 cents [iTunes] , it won’t cost you much to find out!

Comments

  • saintsalive

    They really made it that hard to link “Pig” and “Economy”?