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Health & Fitness

The Wikipedia Game

a way for quick geeky fun

Last weekend my daughter, husband and I were sitting together in the living room, each with our own laptops.  It had been a long day: collectively we weeded the gardens, mowed the lawn, cleaned bathrooms, did some laundry, and dusted & vacuumed.  (We’re not usually that industrious…we were behind on our chores!)  All that and it was one of those hot, humid days, so we were whooped.

I confess I was just checking in on Facebook.  I had no idea what computer work my husband was doing but I suspect he was checking his work e-mail and perhaps the latest Red Sox stats.  I have no idea what my daughter was doing.

We agreed to play the Wikipedia game. It was the perfect opportunity for some geeky fun.

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Here’s how it works.  Each player needs a computer.  All players start on the same Wikipedia page, agree on a target Wikipedia page that is completely unrelated, then race to get to the target just by clicking on various links found within Wikipedia. 

Since it was the holiday weekend, we started with the page for the American Declaration of Independence and agreed to get to Dalmatians. 

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I lost the game but had loads of fun.  My links took me to pages about the census, Europe, food, pets, and dog shows.  My daughter was on the Korea page at one point, yet she was still the first one to Dalmatians.  Go figure.

All in all it was a fun way to spend a few minutes.  Try it, you’ll like it!

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