How to play
The basics
WikiSprint is a race through Wikipedia. One player creates a lobby and gets a five-character code to share with friends. The host picks a start article and a destination article, then everyone races from one to the other by clicking links inside the articles. No searching, no typing in the address bar: only clicks on article links count.
The first player to land on the destination article wins. If nobody can get there, players can surrender, and the host can end the race for everyone at any time. After a race, the results screen shows each player's time, click count, and the path of articles they travelled through.
There are no accounts and no downloads. Your name and identity live on your own device, so you can open a lobby link and be racing within seconds.
Strategies
Aim for hub articles. Big, general articles like countries, continents, religions, and sciences link to thousands of others. Getting to a hub first makes the final hop much easier.
Use the first paragraph. The lead of a Wikipedia article is dense with links to the most related topics. Scanning the first two paragraphs is usually faster than scrolling the whole page.
Think in categories. Ask what kind of thing the destination is. A fruit? Get to Food or Plant. A war? Get to the country it happened in, then its history section. Climbing up to a broad category and back down is the core skill of the game.
Infoboxes are shortcuts. The box on the right of many articles links to parents, related places, and key people. It is often the fastest way to jump sideways to a neighbouring topic.
Do not be afraid to backtrack. A dead end costs less time if you retreat quickly and try a different branch.
What is Wikipedia?
Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia written and maintained by volunteers around the world. It contains millions of articles in hundreds of languages, and almost every article links to many others. That web of links is what makes a game like WikiSprint possible: any two articles are connected, and finding the shortest path between them is the whole challenge.
WikiSprint is an unofficial fan project and is not affiliated with Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation.
For the full rules, a worked example race and a glossary, read how to play. For route-finding theory, hub articles and infobox shortcuts, read the strategy guide.