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We’ve discussed the various possible forms of constrained writing many times here, so why not ‘constrained clicking’? I was referred to a blog collective, TruthBeauty, from a out-of-the-ways town in Australia, Wagga Wagga, and discovered a post by ‘casey’ about a great wikipedia game. Here is the post reblogged here:
over the school holidays my dear son Zach discovered the joys of wikipedia (thanks in no small part to my new laptop). he sent me an email today outlining his new wikipedia game: from the wikipedia main page click on random article - from there follow links till you get to the wagga wagga article.i made it the first time in five pages: Mohammed Bin Hammam - Australia National Football (Soccer) Team - Australia - New South Wales - Wagga Wagga.
too easy, hey? my next random article is On Golden Pond and proving to be a little trickier.
how many pages can you make it in?
There are a few comments in the post, as everyone compares the routes they’ve taken through wikipedia in search of THE WAGGA WAGGA PAGE. This reminded me not only of constrained writing (and so I called it constrained clicking) but also of games I used to play (with myself) as a kid. I used to pick an object, like a parrot, and another, like tomato sauce, and give myself a number, like 5, which represented the amount of sentences I should take to get from object a to object b with a story that makes sense. Anyone have any examples of such games they played or even other examples of ‘constrained clicking’?
this is me, ‘zach’, writing this.glad you like my game.
Hello Zach! Yes, great game. Sorry, I obviously forgot to mention that the game was posted by casey but created by you. :)
This describes the artistic method I have been using to develop a “random” chatbot project I call “The Mirror.” Most people get bored/annoyed very quickly when chatbots don’t talk in consonant, traditional ways. They don’t want to work to provide conversational connective tissue. But it’s one of my favorite games. It’s kind of a qualitatively expanded version of Doublets (the word game where you, for instance, make LOVE into HATE in 5 steps, by changing one letter at a time).
Hello Websafe! Long time no cyee. I’m so glad to see you’ve got a bot publically available now. yay! I look forward to checking it out.