Six Degrees of WikiBacon

So, this evening my brother Dave and I invented the awesomest game in the universe by accident. Here's what you do. You go to Wikipedia and hit the random article button on the top left hand column. Then, you try to get to Kevin Bacon in six links or less. No cheating, such as looking stuff up on Google or using your back button.

Here are some examples:

0 US House of Representatives
1 California State Legislature
2 California
3 Hollywood
4 Walk of Fame
5 List of Stars
6 Kevin Bacon!

0 Indian Institute of Technology
1 MIT
2 Counterculture
3 Brokeback Mountain
4 Randy Quaid
5 American film actors
6 Ba
7 :( Kevin Bacon (So close, yet so not six degrees...)

0 Dolores Project
1 Ute Tribe
2 Utah
3 Footloose
4 Kevin Bacon!!!

0 Chromosome 15
1 Marfan syndrome
2 Vincent Schiavelli
3 Ghost (Yes, we thought Kevin Bacon was in Ghost. That's right. We suck.)
4 Demi Moore
5 A Few Good Men
6 Kevin Bacon!

0 Douglas Head Lighthouse
1 1986
2 1986 in film
3 Tom Cruise
4 A Few Good Men
5 Kevin Bacon!!

0 Parseval's identity
1 Mathematics
2 Space
3 Outer Space
4 NASA
5 Apollo 13
6 Kevin Bacon!

We also could have won on that last one by going from Math to Combinatorics to Paul Erdős to Erdős number to six degrees to Kevin Bacon. But I only remembered that there was some math guy that people played a game with like Kevin Bacon, and I had to look up some info to make the connection. That's cheating, so it doesn't count.

Anyway, it's totally sweet. And easy to play. It would be even easier if I knew something about Kevin Bacon. (I only know like four movies he is in-- the other one I haven't used yet is Tremors.) Others of my imaginary readers will have superior knowledge, and thus do much better at this game than I. But that's okay. The game is my gift to the world. I'm like Dr. James Naismith. I don't have to be good at it, because I invented it. I think.

Has someone else already played this game? I don't think so, but it seems pretty obvious in retrospect. Anyway, if you have, you're Dr. James Naismith, and I'm not. But if you haven't, then I am. So there.

--REDBEARD

PS - Feel free to play the game yourself and leave your scores in the Comments, or Trackbacks or whatever. Party on.