Six Degrees of Wikipedia

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A strange and sociologically meaningless online exercise just caught my attention, and I wanted to share it with all of you.  This is of course based on the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”  In Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, the player is challenged to come up with an actor, then link that actor to Kevin Bacon through no more than 6 roles and movies.

For instance: Carrie Fischer.

Carrie Fischer was in Star Wars with Harrison Ford.
Harrison Ford was in The Fugitive with Tommy Lee Jones.
Tommy Lee Jones was in Batman Forever with Val Kilmer.
Val Kilmer was in Heat with Robert Dinero.
Robert Dinero was in Sleepers with KEVIN BACON.

Well the game has been translated into a much more larger field – wikipedia.  In “Six Degrees of Wikipedia” the player is challenged to find a link between any two entries with less than 6 wikipedia links.  Of course the game is played by a computer, notably Stephen Dolan’s webserver.  What’s amazing is that it is hard to find two articles separated by more than FOUR entries.

I tried “Corn” and “Korn”.  Easy, only 3 clicks needed (Corn -> Austia -> Rock Music -> Korn)

Next I tried “Steve Jobs” and “Tomatoes”.  Even easier, only 2 clicks.  (Steve Jobs -> Fruitarianism -> Tomatoes).  Fruitarianism!?

I can’t stump it, can you? You can play Six Degrees of Wikipedia here.

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