Wikiler
Name the Wikipedia article by opening it word by word.
- Players
- 1–20
- Length
- ~10 min
- Genre
- Word quiz
Wikiler is a game played on Wikipedia articles. You get an article with most of its meaningful words hidden and the whole title. Type a word and it opens everywhere it appears in the text.
The goal is to name the article. Open words until the title shows through — or take the risk earlier and type the title outright: the fewer attempts and the less time it took, the more points.
Play alone or with up to twenty people: everyone gets the same article, each guesses on their own, and points add up across rounds.
How to play
- 1Choose a topic — a random article or one of 34 topics — the difficulty, the number of rounds and the time. The rest is in the advanced settings.
- 2Type words: the ones that match open in the article along with their grammatical forms, and you see how many times they occur.
- 3Function words, numbers and punctuation are shown from the start, so you can read the shape of the text.
- 4When you know it, switch to the Article tab and type the title.
- 5A wrong title costs 50 points, a missed word 10 and a found one 2, so guess wisely.
- 6After the final round, compare your total with everyone else.
Highlights
- Real Wikipedia articles: each player reads theirs in English, Ukrainian or Russian
- A random article or one of 34 topics: people, history, geography, science… — easy, medium or hard
- Grammatical forms of a word open together
- Solo and multiplayer for up to twenty
- Unlimited or limited attempts
- Configurable rounds, time, share of hidden words and a letter-count hint
Tactics and tips
- Open with common words of the general field: "year", "city", "country", "species". They are cheap and quickly tell you what the article is about.
- Read the shape of the text: dates and numbers, paragraph lengths and section headings give away the kind of article — a biography, a city, an animal.
- The first sentence matters most. It usually repeats the title and defines it in one phrase.
- Risk the title when you are down to two or three candidates: a 50-point penalty is less than a minute of hesitation.
Common mistakes
- Guessing rare words — a miss costs five times what a found word does.
- Waiting for the whole title to appear and losing points to the clock.
- Typing the title in the Word tab, which takes one word at a time.
Frequently asked questions
Where do the articles come from?
Straight from Wikipedia: your browser loads them from en.wikipedia.org, uk.wikipedia.org or ru.wikipedia.org — each player in their interface language, or everyone in the host’s if the host chose so. The articles are written by Wikipedia’s authors and available under CC BY-SA 4.0 — after each round you get a link to the article and its list of authors.
How is the score calculated?
A round starts at 1,000 points. The whole round costs 500 over time, a missed word 10 and a found one 2 (dearer in proportion under an attempt limit below 50), a wrong title 50. A solved round is worth at least 10.
Why did other words open with mine?
Grammatical forms open together: "work" also opens "works" and "worked". The forms are found automatically, so occasionally related words open too.
Is this a Wikipedia game?
No. Wikiler uses Wikipedia’s open articles but is not affiliated with Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation.