Wikipedia Rabbit Hole Race
It’s 3 AM, you have work in the morning, and you can’t stop reading about the Dancing Plague of 1518. This leads you to another compelling article, and then another one, and then suddenly you’re finding out that modern art was created by the CIA—and then your alarm clock rings.
We’ve all fallen down a Wikipedia rabbit hole before.
If you’re a curious soul who can’t resist the allure of clicking the next link in an attempt to satisfy your unquenchable thirst for useless knowledge, then you’re the perfect candidate for the Wikipedia Rabbit Hole Race.
Wiki Wiki Wild
Encyclopedia races can be traced back to 16th century France, where they were referred to as courses encyclopédiques. Scholars would pit themselves against one another, attempting to quickly discover relationships between passages in their cumbersome tomes. This eventually led to more modern interpretations, such as Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon and LinkNow’s Wikipedia Rabbit Hole Race.
Are You Wikied Smart?
In this event, contestants will spin a wheel of topics to determine two seemingly unrelated Wikipedia articles. They must then attempt to navigate from the starting page to the end page using only hyperlinks within the articles while sharing their screen. Only clicking on hyperlinks is allowed, so no CTRL+F, right clicking, or other sneaky tactics! The contestant who reaches their target page in the fastest time will be the winner, regardless of how many articles they must click to reach it.
This promises to be an exciting event that requires on-the-fly thinking, diverse knowledge, and maximized routing. Contestants will also be sharing their screens, so we invite you to cheer on your department’s Wikipedia wizard and see where the links take them.