Catfishing
Guess the Wikipedia article from nothing but the list of categories it sits in.
Every day: Ten Wikipedia articles a day, picked at random from a reviewed list and the same for every player; each is shown only by its categories, and you name the article. New puzzle: Midnight in your local time zone.
Catfishing gives you ten Wikipedia articles a day, shown only as their category tags, and asks you to name each one. It is a broad general knowledge test where a list like American folk musicians and People from Minnesota has to become a single name.
About Catfishing
The idea goes back to 2006, when Sumana Harihareswara started reading out the categories at the bottom of Wikipedia pages for friends to guess. Kevan Davis turned it into a web game that year and named it, long before catfishing meant anything else; the name is categories plus fishing for the answer. That version stopped working in 2009. The current game at catfishing.net was built in 2024 by a developer known as Matthew and now has an archive of hundreds of past days.
Each day the game picks ten articles from a list its maker has reviewed by hand: people, places, things and ideas. For each one you see its categories in alphabetical order, with any that would give the answer away removed automatically. You type the title, or skip. The game is forgiving about capitals, accents and anything in brackets, accepts aliases and redirects, and asks Did You Mean when your spelling is a few letters off. Numbers must be exact, so Apollo 13 will not pass for Apollo 11.
It is hard. The average day ends with around four right, and a score of eight or more is a good day. Each answer links to the article, so even a miss usually teaches you something, and you can suggest articles for future days.
Catfishing suits people who like general knowledge quizzes and reading Wikipedia for fun. It rewards wide reading over any one specialty.
How to play Catfishing
- Press Play today to start the day's ten questions.
- Read the list of categories shown for the first article.
- Type the article's title and press Enter, or skip if you have no idea.
- If the game asks Did You Mean, confirm the article you intended.
- Read the answer, follow the link to Wikipedia if you like, and move to the next article.
Tips
- Start from the most specific category; a narrow one like a birthplace or an award year does most of the work.
- For people, the surname alone is usually accepted unless it is ambiguous.
- Categories that seem missing are a clue too: anything sharing a word with the title has been removed.
- Do not bother with brackets or disambiguation; just guess the main name.
- Play old days from the archive to learn how categories describe different kinds of article.
Questions
How many questions are there each day?
Ten Wikipedia articles.
Why is it called Catfishing?
The original 2006 version was named for fishing for the answer among categories, before the word took on its online dating meaning.
Which answers count as correct?
The article title and any of its Wikidata aliases or Wikipedia redirects. Capitals, accents, punctuation and anything in brackets are ignored, but numbers must be exact.
Can the same article come up again?
Yes, but not within 18 months.
Is Catfishing free?
Yes. Today's game and the archive are free to play in the browser; the site shows ads and accepts support from players.
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