The rules are simple: Pick a starting page - "Helen Keller," for example. Then pick a second target page, the more disparate, the better - "lucky bamboo," say - and see who can get from the first to the final page fastest, solely by clicking on links embedded within the pages.
It turns out, you can get from the deaf and blind author to the popular houseplant in six clicks: According to Keller's Wikipedia page, the Japanese were especially fond of Keller. The "Japanese people" page leads to the "Japan" page, which contains a reference to the oldest known Japanese folktale, "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter." And from there it's quick clicking to "bamboo" and finally "Dracaena sanderiana" - the "lucky" variety.
Winners are determined by the number of pages visited on the way to the final destination (fewest clicks wins), or players can race against the clock. Other variations require players to begin on different, randomly selected pages and race toward the "Jesus" page.
Priya Marathe, a junior at the University of Pennsylvania, said Wikiracing is "a sign of how addicted we are to the Internet, and how connected everything's become."
She and her friends played a slightly different version of Wikiracing: Instead of racing to a predetermined page, they clicked around the site to see "how bizarre of a page you could end up at."
Of course, for official rules and helpful strategies, you can always look at Wikipedia's Wikirace page and get even more distracted.
What the Wikiracing page does not do is offer clues about the game's origins. But there's a good chance it began like most other home-cooked game - out of sheer boredom.
