[HN Gopher] Wikipedia Speedruns
___________________________________________________________________
Wikipedia Speedruns
Author : mahami
Score : 205 points
Date : 2022-09-15 12:36 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (wikispeedruns.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (wikispeedruns.com)
| tristor wrote:
| This was interesting, this was the last one I did. Reminds me of
| the "Degrees of separation" rule on Wikipedia that any article is
| within 5 or 6 clicks of something about WW2.
|
| -----
|
| You found it!
|
| Here's how you did:
|
| "Diesel engine" to "Ethnic group"
|
| Time: 19.686 Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 4
|
| The path you took: [ "Diesel engine", "Rudolf Diesel", "Second
| French Empire", "French people", "Ethnic group" ]
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Also reminds me of how if you click the second link of a
| Wikipedia article (and the second link of every subsequent
| page) you'll always end up on Philosophy
| epicide wrote:
| More info on this? Unless I'm misunderstanding something, in
| my own test, this isn't true. You can hit loops, e.g. the
| page for Russia goes to Eastern Europe which goes back to
| Russia.
| howenterprisey wrote:
| Wikipedia, unsurprisingly, has a page on this: https://en.w
| ikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Getting_to_Philosoph...
| capableweb wrote:
| Which, ironically, doesn't work for that page. You end up
| in a loop rather than getting to philosophy.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| It worked for me? Either something changed in the past
| five minutes or one of us messed up. I did the first link
| as the article mentions, not the second. That could also
| be the issue.
| agweber wrote:
| 'Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the
| first link in the article text not in parentheses or
| italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at
| "Philosophy".'
|
| Stems from https://xkcd.com/903/ alt-text. Might not be the
| original source, but that's where I know it from.
| SllX wrote:
| Knowledge also forms a loop going from: Knowledge ->
| Procedural knowledge -> Descriptive knowledge -> Knowledge.
| gibspaulding wrote:
| I just tried it from a random page and thought it was going
| to work when I hit "knowledge", but ended up with a loop
| too. I think it's more of a truism than actual provable
| fact.
| epicide wrote:
| I think it might be provable that you'll eventually hit a
| loop.
|
| EDIT: I suppose one disproof would be the existence of
| articles that don't have a second link.
| digitalmk wrote:
| For someone who didn't exactly excel in chemistry, this was
| rough:
|
| "Automotive industry" to "Pi bond" Time: 145.773 Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 13
|
| The path you took: [ "Automotive industry", "Industry
| (economics)", "Product (business)", "Raw material", "Foundry",
| "Hydrogen gas porosity", "Hydrogen", "Diatomic molecule",
| "Molecule", "Chemical bond", "Bond length", "Molecular geometry",
| "Covalent bond", "Pi bond" ] 145.77300000000002
| ianhawes wrote:
| "John F. Kennedy" to "Chemical formula"
|
| Time: 54.809 Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 7
|
| The path you took: [ "John F. Kennedy", "Harvard University",
| "List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation", "Nobel
| Prize", "Nobel Prize in Chemistry", "Chemistry", "Chemical
| equation", "Chemical formula" ]
| kgeist wrote:
| I clicked "I'm feeling lucky" and the very first link in the
| very first page led me to the ending article, took me 5
| seconds. Lucky indeed.
| harel wrote:
| Twitter to Gambia... That was way more fun than I thought it
| would be...
| Breadmaker wrote:
| :-)
|
| "Ditransitive verb" to "Paul the Apostle"
|
| Time: 133.395 Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 10
|
| The path you took: [ "Ditransitive verb", "Grammar",
| "Linguistics", "Science", "Fall of the Western Roman Empire",
| "Edict of Milan", "Edict of Thessalonica", "Arianism", "Jesus",
| "Pauline epistles", "Paul the Apostle" ]
| Breadmaker wrote:
| This is the next olympic sport.
|
| "National Collegiate Athletic Association" to "Myanmar"
|
| Time: 63.695 Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 6
|
| The path you took: [ "National Collegiate Athletic
| Association", "Student athlete", "Amateur", "Olympic Games",
| "International Olympic Committee", "Thailand", "Myanmar" ]
| dmix wrote:
| There should be ranking charts for each combination.
| davikr wrote:
| "Magazine" to "Periodical literature" Time: 1.113 Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 1
|
| The path you took: [ "Magazine", "Periodical literature" ]
|
| :)
| klyrs wrote:
| Well, that was fun, but the inability to go back without
| completely restarting was a little frustrating.
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| This might be considered a feature since it makes it harder. I
| noticed you also can't Ctrl+F anywhere.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Particularly on mobile, where lots of small links next to each
| other is a minefield. I went to click the winning link one
| match only to click the line below, causing me to quit playing.
| dmix wrote:
| This was a fun one:
|
| ---
|
| "Domain name" to "Creative Commons license" Time: 90.194 Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 8
|
| The path you took: [ "Domain name", "Website", "Adobe Flash
| Player", "Browser game", "Free-to-play", "Freemium", "Open
| source", "Creative Commons", "Creative Commons license" ]
|
| https://wikispeedruns.com/quick_run/finish?run_id=72581&play...
| dmix wrote:
| "New Delhi" to "Marseille"
|
| Time: 64.282 Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 6
|
| The path you took: [ "New Delhi", "Capital city", "Cantons of
| Switzerland", "French language", "Northern France", "France",
| "Marseille" ]
|
| https://wikispeedruns.com/quick_run/finish?run_id=73745&play...
| Emma_Goldman wrote:
| Very cool. My first go was similar:
|
| "West Virginia" to "Austria-Hungary"
|
| Time: 50.962 Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 8
|
| The path you took: ["West Virginia", "United States", "North
| America", "Continent", "Eurasia", "Europe", "World war",
| "World War I", "Austria-Hungary" ]
| [deleted]
| jaqalopes wrote:
| This is fun, we used to do something like this in high school
| called Five Clicks to Jesus, which is exactly what it sounds
| like.
|
| I find this particular version a bit tedious because you aren't
| allowed to Find on a page. What good is having a timer if I can't
| go fast? Why punish me twice for reaching a dead end page by
| making me read the entire thing to discover that I need to go
| back?
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| I think it's an interesting restriction. The one thing I object
| to is not having sources and especially "See also". Most of the
| time I can get things within 10 clicks even with the
| restrictions.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Looking at the result for others, mines doesn't look so good.
|
| "Australian Recording Industry Association" to "National Register
| of Historic Places listings in South Carolina" Time: 285.376
| Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 16
|
| The path you took: [ "Australian Recording Industry Association",
| "Australia", "Oceania", "Region", "List of regions of the United
| States", "Grand Strand", "South Carolina", "Fort Sumter", "Fort
| Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park", "National
| Historic Site (United States)", "National Register of Historic
| Places", "List of U.S. National Historic Landmarks by state",
| "List of National Historic Landmarks in South Carolina", "St.
| James Episcopal Church (Santee, South Carolina)", "National
| Register of Historic Places", "United States National Register of
| Historic Places listings", "National Register of Historic Places
| listings in South Carolina" ]
| mgraczyk wrote:
| Pretty cool! Some of these are very fun to think about, where to
| look to find the most likely connection and trying to come up
| with intermediate concepts that would likely link two thinks.
| Like linking "Analytics" to "Surrey" my first thought was "bank"
| since it's close to both Analytics and the UK.
| zichy wrote:
| I know some friends who would prefer to play this in their native
| language, so I can't wait for the i18n:
| https://github.com/wikispeedruns/wikipedia-speedruns/issues/...
| SllX wrote:
| "Chromosome" to "BBC One" Time: 78.910 Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 10
|
| The path you took: [ "Chromosome", "DNA", "Life", "Animal",
| "Systema Naturae", "Carl Linnaeus", "Chelsea Physic Garden",
| "Chelsea, London", "United Kingdom", "BBC", "BBC One" ]
|
| This is pretty sick.
| SllX wrote:
| Damn. So I just lost one.
|
| I needed to go from 700 to "Australasian Virtual Herbarium".
|
| Getting from 700 to South Australia or Adelaide is no big deal.
| The problem is trying to find a single Wikipedia page that
| actually links to the Wikipedia page for the Australasian
| Virtual Herbarium rather than to their website (or just
| referencing it without any link text).
|
| I suppose I could go in somewhere and add it myself, but that
| would be cheating. So after 670 seconds, I'm throwing in the
| towel on this one. If anybody finds a way, let me know, but I
| may take a crack at this one again later this evening.
| schoen wrote:
| I used "What Links Here" to find this (just to confirm that
| it can be done, not that I could find it myself). ROT13:
|
| uggcf://ra.jvxvcrqvn.bet/jvxv/Nhfgenyvn
|
| uggcf://ra.jvxvcrqvn.bet/jvxv/Pnaoreen
|
| uggcf://ra.jvxvcrqvn.bet/jvxv/Nhfgenyvna_Angvbany_Obgnavp_Tne
| qraf
|
| uggcf://ra.jvxvcrqvn.bet/jvxv/Nhfgenynfvna_Iveghny_Ureonevhz
|
| I would probably not have been able to find this without
| using the reverse link feature.
| speeder wrote:
| My first attempt already was rather easy, I even forgot to jump
| to my target on first article by using table of contents and
| instead manually scrolled down.
|
| "Americans" to "Pop music" Time: 54.945 Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 3
|
| The path you took: [ "Americans", "Culture of the United States",
| "Michael Jackson", "Pop music" ]
| egello wrote:
| oh boy! I remember playing this game several years ago.
|
| Here's how my run went:
|
| "800 (number)" to "Video game" Time: 155.120 Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 9
|
| The path you took: [ "800 (number)", "Factorial prime",
| "Integer", "C (programming language)", "Operating system",
| "Computer program", "Programmer", "Flight simulator", "Space
| flight simulation game", "Video game" ]
| mypastself wrote:
| Fun! I got lucky:
|
| --
|
| "Federal Information Processing Standards" to "Cuba"
|
| Time: 38.630 Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 2
|
| The path you took: [ "Federal Information Processing Standards",
| "List of FIPS country codes", "Cuba" ]
|
| --
|
| Immediately searched by the string "countr" on the first page.
| zouhair wrote:
| So you cheated. You are not allowed to use the browser find
| tool.
| ouid wrote:
| Nah, he just ran the any%.
| RainaRelanah wrote:
| > You can't use the browser find tool.
|
| From the rules.
| mypastself wrote:
| D'oh! Missed that.
|
| I'm sure the number of links would have been the same, but it
| would take much longer...
| dwringer wrote:
| Without using the browser find tool I suddenly realize it's
| nothing like how I usually use Wikipedia. I have to scan a
| lot differently to find what I'm looking for. I'm not sure
| if that's a positive or negative thing, since arguably
| using the find tool biases what we read toward what we
| _want_ to see rather than something objectively true.
| thebetatester wrote:
| We used to play this in high school but it was always how many
| clicks to get to Nazi. We were a clever bunch.
| agluszak wrote:
| So apparently it tracks pressing "CTRL+F", but it you select
| "find in page" from the menu in your browser that's fine. I guess
| there's no way for a website to track that anyway.
| abejfehr wrote:
| Reminds me of the Wiki Game: https://www.thewikigame.com/
| cdong wrote:
| This is an awesome game that I played many years ago with
| friends. I think this is an amazing way to reconnect with friends
| and just have fun at times
| doomlaser wrote:
| Another good one in a similar vein is
| https://www.geoguessr.com/ -- Guess where you are in the world
| from a random location by hopping around through unlabeled
| Google Streetview data
| cpeterso wrote:
| "Impersonal verb" to "September 11 attacks"
|
| Time: 101.131 Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 5
|
| The path you took: [ "Impersonal verb", "English language",
| "United States", "List of states and territories of the United
| States", "New York City", "September 11 attacks" ]
| willis936 wrote:
| I remember calling this Wikipedia Golf.
| qqqwwweeerrr wrote:
| Haha, we used to call it Wikipedia Racing.
| aaronharnly wrote:
| I think Golf is the "fewest clicks" variation. I haven't played
| the "least time" version, but it seems fun too!
| pxeger1 wrote:
| I find it much more interesting to play by fewest links clicked.
| Having a timer running is too much pressure.
| totoglazer wrote:
| Agreed - feels like fewest links requires more thought and less
| manic clicking.
| Harvy wrote:
| Have you tried... Marathon mode? Conserve your clicks but
| take your time
| mediumcat wrote:
| If you want to see if your run could have been optimized, Six
| Degrees of Wikipedia is a neat tool for that.
|
| https://www.sixdegreesofwikipedia.com/
| [deleted]
| jstx1 wrote:
| Not being able to search the page you're on kind of takes away
| from the fun.
| aaron695 wrote:
| fernandotakai wrote:
| Best run so far:
|
| --- "Performative verb" to "Mammal"
|
| Time: 41.101 Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 4
|
| The path you took: [ "Performative verb", "Verb", "Grammatical
| gender", "Human", "Mammal" ]
| kickofline wrote:
| My best run so far: --- "BugGuide" to "Macintosh"
|
| Time: 30.698 Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 6
|
| The path you took:
|
| [ "BugGuide", "Website", "Web browser", "Safari (web browser)",
| "Mac OS X Panther", "MacOS", "Macintosh" ]
| churchill wrote:
| JasonFruit wrote:
| "Synonym" to "Cantons of Switzerland" Time: 79.737 Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 10
|
| The path you took: [ "Synonym", "Morpheme", "Linguistics",
| "Language", "Language family", "Indo-European languages",
| "Germanic languages", "German language", "Swiss Standard German",
| "Switzerland", "Cantons of Switzerland" ]
| piaste wrote:
| Easiest one so far: "Cricket" to "Economics", 5 links in 30
| seconds via London.
|
| Hardest: "Iceland" to "FIPS", 160 seconds because I spent way too
| much time looking for anything IT-related on Iceland's page, then
| decided to try the USAF link and got in through "command and
| control".
| macNchz wrote:
| Many years ago as a junior developer, some of the very first non-
| trivial Python code I wrote was an effort to do this
| programmatically. It was fun! I remember working on it over time,
| trying to make it faster and more clever. I learned a ton about
| graph traversal, parsing HTML outside a browser context, data
| structures for caching/memoization, and Python itself.
| perch56 wrote:
| "Computer network" to "Niger" Time: 257.660 Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 3
|
| The path you took: [ "Computer network", "Internet Assigned
| Numbers Authority", "Time zone", "Niger" ]
| wolframhempel wrote:
| Haha, loving it. "Gastropoda" to "Basque language" Time: 111.094
| Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 5 [ "Gastropoda", "Taxonomy (biology)",
| "Ancient Greek", "Language family", "Language isolate", "Basque
| language" ]
| wolframhempel wrote:
| Also, I challenge everyone to break this record: "History of
| Christianity" to "University of Cambridge" Number of links
| visited: 2 [ "History of Christianity", "University of Oxford",
| "University of Cambridge" ]
| FillardMillmore wrote:
| Oh man, this is a lot of fun
|
| "Tamil language" to "Republican Party (United States)" Time:
| 95.330 Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 9
|
| The path you took: [ "Tamil language", "Indian subcontinent",
| "United Nations geoscheme for Asia", "United Nations", "Member
| states of the United Nations", "United States", "List of states
| and territories of the United States", "Alabama", "Alabama
| Republican Party", "Republican Party (United States)" ]
| ezoe wrote:
| This is the random task I can't solve it. To go to the
| "Australian Plant Name Index" seems to be an impossible task.
|
| https://wikispeedruns.com/play/quick_play?prompt_start=Cleve...
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| It took me a very long time, but I eventually found it by going
| through (abbreviated) botany -> taxonomic database ->
| Encyclopedia of Life -> Atlas of Living Australia -> CSIRO ->
| Australian National Botanic Gardens -> Australian Plant Name
| Index.
| TactiFail wrote:
| Cleveland,Canada,North America,Northern
| Hemisphere,North,South,Australia,Flora of
| Australia,Nothofagus,Plants of the World Online,International
| Plant Names Index,Australian Plant Name Index
| [deleted]
| howderek wrote:
| Cleveland,List of sovereign states,Australia,Flora of
| Australia,Eucalyptus,Eucalyptus camaldulensis,Australian Plant
| Census,Australian Plant Name Index
|
| It is harder than it needs to be because the Taxon Identifiers
| at the bottom of the page of plant species is missing from the
| wikispeedruns rendering of the page. That box seems to pretty
| consistently link to APNI.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| The bottom box is against the rules, as well as "See Also"
| and sidebars. Links from the article text only. Wikispeedrun
| just renders it without the rulebreaking sections.
|
| There's also some common house rules. No ctrl+f and no back
| button are fun.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikirace
| nicky0 wrote:
| For me ..... Cleveland,United States,Flag of the United
| States,National flag,Royal Standard of the United
| Kingdom,Commonwealth realm,Australia,Biodiversity action
| plan,Biodiversity,Global Biodiversity Information
| Facility,Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG),Global
| Biodiversity Information Facility,Biodiversity
| informatics,International Plant Names Index,Australian Plant
| Name Index
|
| Interesting game! Not being able to go backwards makes it much
| harder.
| bena wrote:
| The tutorial is infuriating. It tells you to do a thing, but then
| doesn't let you do it unless you click next, which isn't
| apparent.
|
| If you tell a person to do a thing, you have to let them do it.
| If you want people to click the "next" button instead, you tell
| them to do that.
| driscoll42 wrote:
| There was a good article from six degrees of wikipedia
| (https://www.sixdegreesofwikipedia.com/blog/search-results-an...)
| which would show the ideal path and be cheating, but fun to
| compare optimal vs what was found.
| sedatk wrote:
| Also, there's this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Getting_to_Philosoph...
| Nadya wrote:
| I've found the trick for these - unless a more obvious/direct
| path exists (eg. you get two somewhat related topics) is to try
| and find the Nazis first. I tried to go from Arabic to
| Science/Mathematics but that didn't pan out so pivoted to the
| Nazis which were only 3 degrees of separation away.
|
| ----
|
| "Grammatical tense" to "Scientific method" Time: 150.046 Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 9
|
| The path you took: [ "Grammatical tense", "Arabic", "List of
| languages by total number of speakers", "Language shift", "Anti-
| German sentiment", "World War I", "Nazism", "Pseudoscience",
| "Science", "Scientific method" ]
| Taniwha wrote:
| pfft - we used to do this in paper encyclopedias in middle school
| anuvrat1 wrote:
| This is fun!!
|
| "Advanced Audio Coding" to "Butterfly"
|
| Time: 82.087 Seconds
|
| Number of links visited: 7
|
| The path you took: [ "Advanced Audio Coding", "Bell Labs", "C
| (programming language)", "Compiler", "Debugging", "Software bug",
| "Moth", "Butterfly" ]
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(page generated 2022-09-15 23:00 UTC)