Catfishing serves ten Wikipedia articles a day, drawn at random from more than 6,000 its author reviewed, and hides everything except their categories. Each article sits in at least four categories that no other page shares, listed alphabetically, and any category that repeats a word from the title is removed. You type the title, and a Close enough button grants half a mark when you knew the subject but not its exact name. The site says players average 3 or 4, so a strong day feels earned.
The closest picks also make you identify a hidden Wikipedia page, each from a different kind of evidence: a category list, a chart of page views, redacted text or a run of pictures. Further down are games that treat categories the other way round, or that play with the links between articles, for days when the encyclopedia itself is the attraction.
The nearest match, since its first clue is the same set of category tags, but it works on one article at a time with seven attempts, adds a fresh clue after every round and has a hint mode that reveals how long the page is.
Keeps the hidden Wikipedia page but trades categories for a decade of weekly page-view data plotted as a graph, with the article's type given, so spikes in public interest become your clues across six guesses.
Shows the whole text of the hidden article with every word blacked out, and every word you try is revealed at each spot it occurs, so you rebuild the page from its body rather than from its tags.
Also starts from a hidden Wikipedia page, here its opening section: guessed words fill in, near misses show up in gray according to how close their meaning is, and finding every word of the title wins.
Combines a few written clues with a picture to point you toward the day's Wikipedia articles while a timer counts down, so quick recall matters as much as the breadth of knowledge Catfishing rewards.
Moves from Wikipedia to Britannica: an article has its key words blanked, and you open words and hints only when you need them, trying to name the subject with as little help as possible.
Turns Catfishing's question around: you answer six short clues, then deduce the unseen category linking all six answers, so you are naming the label rather than the thing it labels.
Uses articles as the pieces: titles are arranged around a six- or nine-sided shape, and you connect every pair whose pages cite each other before time runs out, with an easy and a hard board.
Puts your feel for Wikipedia to a different use: you get from a starting article to a goal page through in-text links alone, chasing the shortest chain, then compare it with yesterday's quickest route.
Races you across Wikipedia from a start page to an unrelated one, say from Mathematics to the Bee Gees, clicking links only with no search box; fewer clicks rank you higher, and speed breaks ties.
If you knew the answer but typed the title wrong, Close enough lets you award yourself half a mark. The game is lenient in other ways too: it accepts Wikidata aliases and Wikipedia redirects, ignores capitals, accents and anything in brackets, and offers a Did You Mean prompt when a guess is a few letters off. Numbers must be exact, and a surname alone works for most real people.
Yes, but not within 18 months of its last appearance. The game picks ten articles at random each day from a pool of over 6,000, and on special dates such as 25 December or 1 April the author may choose ten themed articles instead. Players can suggest new articles or report ones that do not work as questions.
WikiWhiz begins with the same kind of category list and allows seven attempts at a single article, adding clues as you go. Heyday and Redactle also hide one Wikipedia page, behind a page-view chart and a blacked-out text.
