Catfishing Today Past Stats Support Settings Help Stats Support Settings Help

Contents

How to play

  • On Wikipedia, each article is in a number of categories. Guess the article title from its categories.
  • Don’t worry about capitalisation, accent marks, or anything in brackets.
  • If you had the right answer but got the title wrong, tap
  • It’s a challenging test of general knowledge. On average, players score 3 or 4 out of 10.

Articles and categories

  • The game has over 5,500 articles, curated from player suggestions, the Vital Articles project, and popular pages.
  • 10 articles are picked at random each day.
  • Each article is in at least four categories, and is the only article in those categories. To avoid giveaways, categories which have any non-trivial words in common with the title are removed.
  • If an article doesn’t make sense, tap and I will review it.

Guesses and answers

  • Many alternatives to the exact title are accepted. Specifically, any aliases on Wikidata and any word or phrase which Wikipedia redirects to the article.
  • If your guess is within a few letters of the correct title or an alternative, the game asks Did You Mean the correct title.
  • We accept surname-only answers for real people – unless the full name is necessary to distinguish from a plausible but incorrect answer. For example, we'd need a full name for Venus Williams or Serena Williams.

Frequently asked questions

    • How are the articles picked?

    • First, I reviewed 21,000 articles and accepted around 5,500.

      Then, every day, the game automatically picks 10 of these at random. If one happens to be linked to current events, that’s a coincidence!

      To keep days varied, the picker skips any article that shares categories with other articles in today’s or yesterday’s set (apart from a few very broad categories like Living people).

      Occasionally, I’ll hand-pick 10 themed articles for “special” days such as 25 December or 1 April.

    • Which categories are shown?

    • On Wikipedia, articles belong to categories. The game filters out any categories:

      • that share a non-trivial word with the title (excluding any disambiguation);
      • that match the singular or plural form of the whole title (excluding any disambiguation) – e.g. Fruit bat or Fruit bats for the article Fruit bat;
      • that are maintenance or administrative categories, like Articles needing translation.

      Filtering is automatic. Categories are never filtered by hand.

      Categories are retrieved from Wikipedia and stored in the game database; they are not live. This prevents a question ‘breaking’ if an editor adds a giveaway category or removes an essential one.

      Each article in the game is in at least four categories. We verify that the article is the only one that belongs to all of its displayed categories.

      Categories are listed alphabetically, unlike on Wikipedia where ordering is inconsistent.

    • Which answers are accepted?

    • We crowd-source answers from Wikipedia and Wikidata. As well as the title, we accept any alias on Wikidata and any word or phrase which Wikipedia redirects to the article.

      When checking your guess, the game ignores:

      • capitalisation, punctuation, and accent marks;
      • common prefixes such as a, an, and the – but only at the start of your guess;
      • anything in brackets – so just guess Africa, not Africa (Toto song).

      A small number of aliases and redirects are not accepted as answers:

      • those that are also shown as categories;
      • the phrases ‘capital of …’, ‘currency in …’, and ‘national anthem of …’. For example, capital of Ireland isn’t accepted for the article Dublin.

      As set out above, surnames are generally accepted for real people.

    • Have I seen this article before?

    • No, the game has never picked the same article twice. However, it does include similar articles, and different articles that accept the same answer.

    • How can I improve the categories or answers?

    • You can edit categories on Wikipedia, and edit aliases on Wikidata. Make sure these are genuine edits which comply with Wikipedia’s policies. Then let me know (edits aren’t automatically picked up). Thank you for contributing to Wikipedia and Catfishing!

    • Can I suggest an article?

    • Thanks for your interest! Most articles were suggested by players. Suggestions closed in March 2025, as we’d reached over 5,500 articles and many that work well as questions had already been suggested. I don’t plan to reopen suggestions.

    • Why are some articles retired?

    • A small number of articles are retired – almost all from before December 2024. Retired articles can’t be played. An article may be retired if it was too difficult or frequently reported by players. In the shareable score, ⚫ represents a retired article.

    • Why is it called Catfishing?

    • The original version was named in 2006, several years before the word meant anything else. I kept the name because it’s distinctive and descriptive (you’re fishing for the answer in categories) – and because the 🐈 and 🐟 emoji are cute!

      The game can also be accessed at https://categoryfishing.net

    Keyboard shortcuts

    Context Key Action
    Home Enter Start today’s game
    Question Enter Enter guess
    CtrlEnter Skip
    Did You Mean y Yes
    n No
    Answer Enter Next question
    c Toggle Close Enough
    r Toggle report
    w Open Wikipedia article in new tab
    Completed c Copy score emoji 🐈🐟

    Community

    Support the game

    • If you’d like to support the game, you can buy me a coffee on Ko-fi.
    • Your support is much appreciated. Caffeine keeps me improving the game, powers the server, and the cats and fish seem to like it too. There’s absolutely no obligation. Thank you! ❤️ — Matthew

    Contact the author

    Credits

    Further credits and licensing
    • Article titles, categories, and text are sourced from Wikipedia, created by Wikipedia contributors, and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
    • Article thumbnail images are sourced from Wikimedia Commons. All images are available under free-content licenses. Attribution and license information is sourced from the Wikimedia Commons API and displayed on the same page as the image.
    • Article aliases are sourced from Wikidata, licensed under CC0.
    • Alegraya and Alegreya Sans by Juan Pablo del Peral for Huerta Tipográfica, Open Font License.
    • Golden Nile Catfish illustration by Edme-François Jomard, public domain.
    • SVG icons by 480 Design, CC BY 4.0.
    • Close un oeuf joke by Stephen.

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