halfacanuck: The Six Degrees of Wikipedia

December 21, 2004 - 02:54 PM

The Six Degrees of Wikipedia

Here's a fun new game you can play if you're desperately bored and lonely: "The Six Degrees of Wikipedia." In this game one starts at a random entry on Wikipedia and attempts to arrive at the entry on BDSM I've taken the liberty of formalizing it a little, and thus here is my version of the rules:

You must do it in five clicks or fewer
You must arrive specifically at the BDSM entry linked above
You are not allowed to backtrack: each click is your final answer
You can only follow links to pages within Wikipedia itself, i.e. that have "en.wikipedia.org" in the address, and the link must be within the article body itself, not in the sidebar, etc.

Here's one, for example:

The Virgin of the Rocks to Leonardo da Vinci to Illegitimate child to Sexual intercourse to Taboo to Sexual activities to BDSM.

A miserable failure! That was seven degrees. Gah! How about this:

Sexual Personae to De Sade to Perversion to Paraphilia to Bondage and discipline to Sexual bondage to BDSM.

Seven again! Despite going right to an entry related to sex! This is harder than it seems. Last try:

Carl Bridgewater to Life imprisonment to Myra Hindley to Sex Pistols to Penis to Sexual activities to BDSM.

Seven! Unbelievable. But just to prove it can be done, here's the chain that started it all in the first place:

The Six Bullerby Children to Astrid Lindgren to Corporal punishment to BDSM.

There! Done in only four degrees. As you can see, it's not only the funnest game ever invented by a Russian (Tetris who?), but also educational. So give it a try and let me know of your successes and/or miserable failures...

Comments and trackbacks

Here are the erudite, piercing and profoundly arousing comments and trackbacks left so far by my alert readers regarding this entry (you too can make me tumescent by leaving a comment of your own):

Marina – December 21, 2004 07:39 PM

1. personality
2. psychometrics
3. norms
4. human sexual behaviour
5. BDSM

Beat that.

Caz – December 22, 2004 06:12 PM

Oh, wait. You already did. I should read right to the end of these things...

Caz – December 22, 2004 06:13 PM

hey u live in kitchener? that's where dave sim lives.

weiji – December 28, 2004 02:20 AM