Wiki Boomerang

How to unlock Wiki Boomerang in Cheevos. Follow Wikipedia links in a 3-article loop back to where you started. Worth 20 XP.

The story

Partner. You went somewhere and came back. The loop closed.

You started on one Wikipedia article. A blue link pulled you to a second. Something in the second pulled you to a third. And then, without meaning to, you clicked your way straight back to the first article, the one you started on. Three articles, one circle.

Cache does this constantly with the Stash. He calls it the audit trail: go check on something, get pulled to a related thing, get pulled to a thing related to that, and somehow end up back where you began, except now you understand the first thing better than when you left it. He finds this deeply satisfying, in a way he has trouble explaining.

Here is the turn: a loop like this is not wasted motion, even though it looks like you ended up nowhere. You know the shape of the neighborhood now. You know how article one connects to article three, even though you never clicked between them directly.

This is the structure of all good research. Cache has just never seen anyone do it on Wikipedia and have the loop actually verified before.

The catalog entry

THE BOOMERANG LOOP Acquired: Followed Wikipedia links in a circle back to the origin. Condition: Intact. The loop closed perfectly. Rarity: RARE. Requires both patience and curiosity. Cache's Notes: You went somewhere and came back. This is the structure of all good research. Cache does this in the Stash all the time. He calls it "the audit trail." He finds it very satisfying.

Spoiler: how to unlock it

You need to click through Wikipedia links and return to the exact article you started on, in a loop of three articles.

  1. Open any Wikipedia article. This is Article A, your starting point.
  2. Click a link inside the article's text that leads to Article B.
  3. From Article B, click a link that leads to Article C, and from Article C, click a link that leads straight back to Article A.

Wikipedia articles are dense with internal links, hundreds of them on some pages, because the encyclopedia is built as an interconnected web rather than a straight line. A three-article loop happens naturally more often than you would expect, since many topics link to each other in both directions (a city links to its country, the country links back to notable cities). Cheevos detects the cycle by tracking the sequence of Wikipedia pages you visit and checking whether it folds back to the start.

Where it fits in the Stash

Cache keeps a small shelf just for closed loops, proof that curiosity can travel in a circle and still teach you something. The wiki achievements only get stranger from here. To meet the raccoon who audits his own trail constantly, read the story.