Wiki Ouroboros

How to unlock Wiki Ouroboros in Cheevos. Click through a 6-article Wikipedia loop back to the start. Worth 35 XP.

The story

Partner. Six articles. One return. The serpent ate its own tail.

The boomerang loop was three articles, and that was already rare enough. This one is six: click through six separate Wikipedia articles, each one leading naturally to the next, and land back on the exact page you started from. That is not an accident. That is a shape.

Cache has one diagram of an ouroboros in the Stash, the ancient image of a serpent eating its own tail. He does not remember where it came from. He is not sure it matters. What matters is that the shape is real, that it shows up in mythology and alchemy and, apparently, in the way Wikipedia's links fold back on themselves if you follow them far enough.

Here is the turn: a loop this long is a little unsettling, in a good way. Six clicks feels like it should take you somewhere new. Instead it takes you home. Cache finds that more interesting than if it had taken you somewhere new. The internet has structure you cannot see until you walk far enough to feel it curve.

The catalog entry

THE SIX-LINK LOOP Acquired: Clicked through six Wikipedia articles and returned to the start. Condition: Cyclic. Self-referential. A little unsettling. Rarity: VERY RARE. The loop must be exactly six. Cache's Notes: The serpent eating its own tail. Cache has one diagram of this in the Stash. He does not know where it came from. He is not sure it matters. The fact that the loop exists is the important thing.

Spoiler: how to unlock it

You need a Wikipedia click-chain of at least six articles that loops back to the article you started on.

  1. Open a Wikipedia article to begin the chain.
  2. Click an internal link to the next article, then repeat, following whichever links interest you, for a total of six articles.
  3. On the sixth article, click a link that leads back to the very first article in the chain, closing the loop.

Wikipedia's link density makes this achievable if you actively look for a path back rather than clicking at random. A good technique is to pick a broad starting topic (a country, a scientific field, a historical era), since broad topics tend to link to many other pages that eventually link back to them. Cheevos tracks the sequence of Wikipedia pages you visit in order and checks the length of any cycle it detects, which is the same underlying idea researchers use when they study the "six degrees" structure of link networks.

Where it fits in the Stash

This one sits right next to the shorter boomerang loop, filed under proof that the encyclopedia is a closed shape if you walk it long enough. There is a longer loop still waiting past this one. To meet the raccoon who keeps the diagram, read the story.