Paleontology to Plantation

Last week, my blog-friend Kristen posted about using Wikipedia as a boredom-buster game. She suggested you start on one page, and click through to five different links, reading a bit about each one as you go, and just see where you end up! Well that's fun, but I play that game a little differently. I was first introduced to this my some of the kids in my youth group over two years ago, and I even wrote a little post about it! (Back when I had like 11 readers, all of which were my friends and family.) But I'm gonna talk about it again today!

So here's the deal - it's like Connect the Dots with Wiki articles. I can't remember right now what it might be called though...? You randomly choose two words (any words you think might have a Wiki article) and see how many clicks it takes you to get from the first word to the second word. The goal is to keep the number low!

So for example - let's start with "Spaghetti" and try to get to "The Holocaust."

Go ahead. I want you to try it. Really!

It takes a bit of reading, and figuring, and making strategic clicks. Think about how you can get from a food to an event, and that makes it seem a little more manageable. You may have to scroll through a bit of the article before you find something that seems like a good idea. Don't just click on things all willy-nilly without thinking it through though!

So have y'all tried it yet? How many clicks did it take you? It took me only TWO! But I'm a pro at this point, honestly. I had people text me their challenges with word combinations while I was bored at work. I spent quite a bit of time on Wikipedia that summer I first learned this game ;)

Here are a couple more that I just randomly challenged myself with. And of course I want you to try these as well. Let me know how many clicks it took you on some of these!

Paleontology to Plantation (I can't actually get this one!?!)

Lampshade to Penguin (6)

Meatloaf to Computer (4)

Globe to Soybean (5)

Kelly Clarkson to Fax (4)

Body wash to Outback Steakhouse (10)

So how did y'all do with those? Did you beat my amount of clicks? Or maybe did it take you twice as many clicks as it took me?! Did you at least have a little bit of fun?! I did :) Except those first and last ones were really hard. I never could figure out the first one, and the last one took forever! There's got to be an easier way to connect body wash to Outback, right?! Oh, and here's another helpful tip - I like to read over the ending term a little bit first, to get a couple ideas on how I might be able to make the connections. Learn a little bit about it, and it'll be easier to figure out how to get there.

Anyways, I always love random games. Can y'all think of any good combinations that I should try? Maybe I'll send a little prize to the person who's suggestion takes me the most amount of clicks! So let me know which combinations you think I should attempt!

Oh, and in case you're wondering how I did the first one, here's how:

Spaghetti - scroll down to the section labeled 'Consumption' and find the link for World War II in the first sentence. Then scroll wayyy down to the section labeled 'Impact' and you'll find the link for The Holocaust in the last sentence of the second paragraph.

Spaghetti > World War II > The Holocaust = 2 clicks. Boom.