I invented a really cool game this week and immediately knew I’d have to write about it in this spot.
For about 12 hours grandiose visions filled my head of a grateful nation thanking me for handing over, gratis, this innovative blend of fun and learning.
Look in the limo — it’s that Mike James! He’s the one who invented the game craze that’s sweeping the country!
But then it occurred to me to do some checking, and following exhaustive research, which consisted of typing two words into Google and clicking once, it was clear that my imagined brilliance was preceded by scores, probably hundreds or thousands, of others.
But the game itself is really fun and easy and anyone with a computer, Internet connection and time to waste can play it.
The best part is that you play it on Wikipedia — the online, user-edited compendium of knowledge, much of it useful and just as much trivial. I love Wikipedia because in this job one spends considerable time on hold or waiting for return calls or for the inspiration to squeeze out a lead sentence that will hold readers’ attention long enough to move them on to the next sentence.
Wikipedia pages load quickly, even on the Macasaurus computer on my desk, and virtually every entry, even if not of interest in itself, contains links leading to other topics. So with two minutes to burn waiting for a source to come to the phone, I can browse articles about higher mathematics or moon landings — or Marvel comics, if so inclined.
Here’s an actual example of how the game works: Tuesday evening at quitting time one of my colleagues was preparing to cover the Willie Nelson concert at the Paramount. The Wikipedia start page, which every day includes a featured article, snippets from other entries, news items and historical nuggets, was open in front of me.
The challenge: find an entry on Willie Nelson solely by clicking links within other entries.
No fair typing anything or clicking links to external sites. Too bad. Those are my rules.
Here is my progression from the start page, gleaned from the Internet history the next morning: David Byrne, Grammy award, Alison Krause, Austin City Limits, country music, Willie Nelson.
But the David Byrne link made that one a little too easy. How about, oh, I don’t know, snakes. Who knows why snakes, it just popped into my head. Whatever: from Willie it was Austin, Texas, prairie, tallgrass prairie, tallgrass prairie preserve, Great Plains, Plains Indians, American bison, keystone species, predators, snakes.
Could I do it again? Try turning a snake into a fountain pen. From the snake entry it was: Chinese calendar (yes, there’s a link from the snake entry, I double-checked), traditional Chinese characters, clerical script, East Asian calligraphy, calligraphy, pen, fountain pen.
It’s a combination of stalking wild game and solving a maze. The secret, if there is one, is to find a link with some association with the target entry, or that will at least get a little closer. If you’re a geek like me, you’ll get the same thrill upon reaching your target as you will reaching the next level of a video game.
My research, as I said, revealed that other players are in fact equally dorky: typing “Wikipedia game” in the Google search box yielded multiple links, many of them to computer- and physics-geek message forums. Long nights in the lab, I suppose, are not unlike long nights in the newsroom. Other players have variations, such as finding the shortest path between links, or the fastest solution.
For me it’s the thrill of the chase. My preference is to find a target that is totally incongruous with the start entry. Can you get from Abraham Lincoln to microwave oven? I did.
There’s only one problem. Once my game goes viral, every middle school and high school teacher around here is going to hate me. Wait a minute —everyone who has employees with computers is going to hate me.
That’s the price of philanthropy.
