Wikipedia Higher or Lower

How to play Wikipedia Higher or Lower

Every round puts two encyclopedia cards side by side. The card on the left shows how many times its English Wikipedia article was viewed over 90 days; the card on the right keeps its number hidden. Decide whether the second article drew more readers or fewer readers, then watch the real figure count up. Right or wrong, the revealed card slides across and becomes the reference for the next comparison, so the 10 rounds form one chain of 11 articles. There are no lives and no sudden death: you always play the whole chain, and your score is the number of correct calls.

The chain is identical for every player on the same day. It is drawn from the 180 cards of the current Atlas edition by a random generator seeded with the date, so a friend in Paris and a friend in Toronto meet the same articles in the same order. Two neighbouring cards never share a category and their totals always differ by at least ten per cent, so no round is a coin toss between near-identical numbers. A new puzzle unlocks at 00:00 UTC. Progress is saved after every answer: close the tab after round four and you will return to round five later that day. A finished day stays finished, and the page shows your result rather than a second attempt. On a keyboard, the up arrow answers more and the down arrow answers fewer.

Where do the page view numbers come from?

They are real Wikipedia page views. For each card we requested the daily totals of its English Wikipedia article from the Wikimedia pageviews service, across desktop and mobile, for the 90 days from July 9, 2026 to October 6, 2026, and added them up. Only traffic that Wikimedia classifies as user traffic is counted, which filters out most crawlers and monitoring bots, although it is not a count of unique people: a visitor who reloads a page counts twice, and someone reading a translated version of the article in another language does not count at all.

The figures are a fixed snapshot, not a live feed. They are the same numbers printed in the card atlas and used to calculate each card's attack, so any result in the daily game can be checked on that card's page, together with the article revision it was measured from. Because the window is three months long, one viral afternoon matters less than steady interest, but a whole season of news coverage can still lift an article well above its usual level.

Tips: which articles get more readers?

Fame is a better guide than importance. A world-changing scientific idea can have fewer readers than a celebrity in the headlines, and a modest animal page may outdraw a famous mountain range. A few patterns hold up surprisingly often in this higher or lower game:

• People pull the biggest crowds. Historical figures with films, series or school syllabi behind them are read constantly. The median person card has far more readers than the median card of any other category.
• Broad topics beat narrow ones. Every planet in the set is read far more than even the best-known nebula, and the major planets comfortably outdraw their own smaller moons.
• Objects and inventions are the quiet corner. Tools, instruments and machines are the least-read category overall, even when the object itself changed history.
• News and anniversaries matter. A launch, an eclipse, a new film or a centenary can wake an article up for weeks, and summer travel lifts famous landmarks.
• Rarity is a loose hint, not an answer. Most cards were ranked by readership within their own category, so a Legendary is usually among the most-read articles of its theme. Across categories the scale changes completely: the most-read natural wonder in the set still trails every Legendary person.

When the two cards come from different worlds, compare audiences rather than subjects. Ask who would look up each article this month, and how often they would come back.

What do the score and the streak mean?

Your score is the number of correct answers out of 10. A blind guess is right about half the time, so anything above five beats chance and 8/10 or better is an excellent day. Under the result you will find four personal numbers: days played, your average score, your current streak and your best streak. A streak counts consecutive days on which you finished the puzzle, whatever the score, so a 3/10 keeps it alive just as well as a perfect round. Miss a day and the current streak starts again from one on your next finish.

These statistics live in your browser's local storage. They stay private to this device, nothing is uploaded, and clearing your site data resets them. There is no public leaderboard for the daily game yet.

Sharing your result without spoilers

When the chain is complete, the share button produces a short message in the style of other daily puzzles: the puzzle number, your score and a row of ten squares, green for a correct call and red for a miss. It names no articles, so posting it in a group chat does not spoil anything for friends who have not played yet. On phones the button opens the system share sheet; elsewhere it copies the message to your clipboard, ready to paste into a chat, a post or a team channel.

How the daily game connects to the Wiki Battle card game

Every article in the puzzle is one of the 180 collectible cards of Wiki Battle, the free Wikipedia card game on our home page. Page views are more than trivia there: they set each card's attack, and during duels a knowledge strike sometimes asks exactly the question you practise here, which article drew more readers in the last 90 days. A correct answer adds 20 per cent to that round's damage.

If you already have a collection in this browser, or you are signed in, finishing the daily puzzle adds 20 coins to it once per UTC day, or 30 coins for a score of 8/10 or better. Our server rebuilds the chain from the date and checks your answers before anything is added, and finishing the same day again never pays twice. Coins are earned only through play, and 500 of them exchange for an extra card pack. Without a collection the puzzle works exactly the same; your 3 free starter packs are simply waiting on the home page whenever you want them.

Daily puzzle questions

Is Wikipedia Higher or Lower free?

Yes. The daily game has no purchases, needs no account and has no limit on how many friends you challenge with your result.

Can I play earlier puzzles?

Not yet. Each day has one puzzle, numbered from #1 on October 10, 2026. An archive may follow; for now, missing a day only resets your current streak.

Why did a famous article lose?

General fame and attention during one 90-day window are different things. A household name that is rarely in the news can be read less than a topic having its moment, and some subjects are split across several articles, which divides their readers.

Is this an official Wikipedia game?

No. Wikipedia Higher or Lower is part of Wiki Battle, an independent project that is not affiliated with Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation. Article text and images are used under their own licences and credited on each card page.