18Sep/06
Wikipedia 6° challenge
Ever go to Wikipedia to look up "one thing" and then wake up two hours later wondering where the time went? This just happened to me. I checked and I started on Hercules and ended up on Magic Carpet Ride with 27 pages in between.
As a fun challenge I tried to find the smallest number of links between those two articles. The best I could do was 5°:
So the challenge for you is: can you do it in less than 5 jumps between articles? (obviously without editing any of the pages to make your own links and things like that)
Or just post your own pair of random articles and your minimum number of links.
CubeCheater
Piratizer













September 19th, 2006 - 08:57
Hey Eric, I had some free time reminiscing and thought I drop you a comment from Seoul, Korea. I hope all things are well. I guess you have a lot of new toys. Sweet! I’ll write a longer email or something later. Take care.
September 19th, 2006 - 10:47
Does it count if I edit the page?
September 19th, 2006 - 13:22
Hoo: what’s up dude? I was just reading your blog the other day too. Weird coincidence? Send me a mail..
Tony: That’s why I said “Without editing any of the pages”
September 24th, 2006 - 17:07
Hercules > 1995 > July 5 > Steppenwolf (band) > Magic Carpet Ride…. ha.
September 24th, 2006 - 21:01
wait.. where’s the 1995 link on the Hercules page?
September 24th, 2006 - 23:02
well… erm. i guess they must have removed it. here is a tool to find the shortest path: http://tools.wikimedia.de/sixdeg/index.jsp – runs off an old database i guess, so at some point there was 1995 as a link. if you exclude dates, it uses a non-existent ‘television’ link also. the ease in which it does this leads me to believe that there must still be a way to get there in 4 degrees.
September 25th, 2006 - 16:55
Cool, a tool that does this automatically! Looks like it doesn’t work right now though..
September 28th, 2006 - 09:58
Wow, it must be nice to have so much free time.