Ryan meets Wikiwars

After first learning about Wikiwars in class, I decided to practice and play with my friend Ryan. He too had never played before, so after I explained the rules to him, we each chose a few sets of words and we rotated through them to find our answers. For the first set of words, we started at Cosmopolitan (magazine) and ended with sandbox. Because Ryan was new to the process, I won, but we thought that our routes of reaching the end goal were interesting to see along the way.

Ryan: Cosmopolitan (magazine) -->  Australia --> The Great Sandy Desert --> Indigenous Australia --> Cannes Film Festival --> Film Festival --> Projection Screen --> Magnesium Carbonate --> Mineral --> Rock --> Sandstone -->  Sand --> Beach --> Sand art/play --> Sandbox. Total: 14 moves

Laura: Cosmopolitan (magazine) --> War of the Worlds --> The Invisible Man --> Monster High --> Fashion Doll --> Boy --> Child --> Toy --> Ancient Egypt --> Egypt --> Sahara --> Dune --> Sandbag --> Sand art/play --> Sandbox. Total: 13 moves

Although our number of moves for the first round was almost identical, I tried to go through the the route of a desert, while Ryan started in that path and then went astray when he started researching film festivals. For the second round, I wanted to start with Michael Wesch, and Ryan wanted the end word to be "Turbo Grafx 16" which is apparently a game console.

At first, this seemed like it could be somewhat challenging, however both of us quickly realized that it was an easier connection than originally appeared. We took the same path, and finished at almost the exact same time.

Ryan and Laura: Michael Wesch --> New media --> video games --> video game console --> Turbo Grafx 16. Total moves: 4 moves

For the final round, we began with the word artichoke and ended with the Boy Meets World television show. My path was very long and winding, with me never finding the connection. Ryan on the other hand, went broad and then went back to detail:

Ryan: Artichoke --> United States --> television network --> American broadcasting company --> Walt Disney Studios --> ABC studios --> Boy Meets World. Total: 6 moves

Overall, these Wikiwars ended up getting very intense and heated, and we found ourselves getting distracted from our homework for more than an hour playing more than these three rounds. More and more people got involved, and it's already quite the tool 0f distraction.