By Mihir Patkar
Falling down the Wikipedia rabbit hole was never this fun! These games use Wikipedia articles for a great combination of entertainment and education.
Everybody loves Wikipedia. But some love it so much that they've turned it into a game! No, not editing the articles itself. Since the data on Wikipedia is freely available, some developers have used it to create innovative and entertaining games, which also help you learn a thing or two as you play.
1. Title Takedown (Web): Play Hangman to Guess Wikipedia Article Title
Title Takedown is a polished reimagination of the classic word game Hangman, with a fun Wikipedia twist. Apparently, a rogue AI has taken control of Wikipedia and is corrupting article titles. You play a skilled hacker who has to restore these back to their original by guessing the title based on a clue from the article description.
Each game starts with all letters missing, indicating the article title's word through blank tiles. You'll find the description or clue for the article title right below this. Click letters in the on-screen virtual keyboard, and they'll be automatically filled into whichever tiles they belong to. You have six lives for each game, with each wrong guess losing a life.
Players have the option to register for an account to track their progress. This lets you compete with others on a global leaderboard, but more importantly, your skill level will be set to where you last left off. In a Guest account, you'll have to start from the easiest skill each time.
2. Linkdle (Web): Daily Wikipedia Game to Find a Route to Another Article
Wordle stormed the internet by giving people a simple daily puzzle to solve. Linkdle attempts the same, although the puzzle isn't as easy. Every day, the game gives a new target article sourced from Wikipedia and a random starting page for a seemingly completely unconnected Wiki article.
The objective of the game is to go from your starting article to the target article in the least clicks possible. But you can only click on blue links within any Wikipedia article already open in the game. It will test your lateral thinking skill as well as general knowledge, as you try and figure out what you should click to end up on a page that has the target article linked in it.
Linkdle refreshes every 24 hours with a new target and starting page, making it one of the best daily puzzle alternatives to Wordle. You can also create a custom Linkdle problem and share it with your friends, challenging them to connect two articles in fewer steps than you.
3. The Wiki Game (Web): Multiplayer Race to Go From One Wiki to Another
The Wiki Game has been around for years, but it's still one of the best ways to discover interesting Wiki reads. Like Linkdle, the objective is to go from a starting article to a target article. But here, speed matters a lot more than taking the least amount of clicks. It's an online race against other players!
Each round of The Wiki Game lasts 120 seconds. You'll see all global participants in the left sidebar, along with how many clicks they've used so far as well as whether they've reached the target or not. Meanwhile, you still have to try and get to the target as quickly as possible yourself, so use your clicks wisely.
If you finish within 120 seconds, you can start another round if time permits. Try and beat your previous round within the time, and The Wiki Game will add up both your attempts, giving you bonus points.
The game runs 24x7, and there is a continuous leaderboard to check the current round, daily, weekly, or all-time leaders. You can play as a guest if you don't care about the all-time points, but otherwise, you'll need to register to track your progress.
4. Redactle Unlimited (Web): Uncover Redacted Words to Reveal the Wiki Page
An entire Wikipedia article has had its most important words redacted. What's left are articles, conjunctions, prepositions, and other such words that don't really tell you the subject matter. Your task is to guess the words to make sense of the sentences, and thus unlock the article title. That was the premise of Redactle, which has now been shut down. But a fan made a free alternative called Redactle Unlimited, with a few better features.
In Redactle Unlimited, whenever you guess a correct word, you'll see how many hits it has among the blanked-out words. You can quickly scroll to these through the right sidebar. The game uses "smart guessing" to account for plurals and inflections, so don't worry about getting the word exactly right.
As you can imagine, it's a time-consuming game given the sheer number of words that are redacted. But once you unravel a few words in a sentence, you'll probably guess the remaining; and then you can try to make sense of the paragraph; and then the section. It's oddly engrossing, but a pretty geeky pursuit. And if you're stuck, you can avail of up to three hints per puzzle.
5. WikiTrivia (Web): Arrange Wikipedia Article Cards Chronologically to Win
Do you consider yourself a history buff? Put your knowledge to the test with Tom J. Watson's fun Wikipedia-based game that makes you guess when something happened. It's free and works great on both desktop and phone screens.
The game gives you a Wikipedia article in the form of a card, that has the article title, a short description, and the main Wiki image. Using this information, you need to put it in the timeline at the bottom of the screen. The card needs to be placed in the correct chronology to retain your lives; three mistakes and it's game over.
Every time you place a card, WikiTrivia will show its date. You can now also click the card to flip it and get a short description. And you can click through to read the full Wikipedia article as well. WikiTrivia tracks your streaks to tell you how many cards you got right before your game ended. It's truly one of the best apps to make history exciting.
Remember to Save Articles for Later
These games are tremendous fun, and you'll likely get engrossed and competitive in trying to be the best. But don't forget, you'll also come across weird and interesting Wikipedia pages you'll want to read. It's a good idea to create a bookmarks folder and save these articles to read later. Or if you're on mobile, use the Wikipedia app instead of the website to save them for offline reading.
