Day 19: Attempt 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon

Some of you may be familiar with this game, which is based on the “six degrees of separation” theory. The idea is that the world is so small that any actor’s film career can be connected to Kevin Bacon within six moves. An example of this is as follows: Zac Efron was in the movie “Hairspray” with Paul Dooley, who was in the movie “Telling Lies in America” with Kevin Bacon. That would give Zac Efron a Bacon number of 2, as it takes 2 moves to reach Kevin Bacon. I decided to take this concept and make it more difficult. I would take a random Wikipedia web page and see if I could reach Kevin Bacon in six moves, passing only through links in Wikipedia articles.

I asked Stephanie for a random Wikipedia entry to begin with, and she suggested cat nip, also known as Nepeta (its plant name). It took me a while to finally find one. I kept getting seven, as you can see in these two examples:

Fail 1: Cat nip is an Aphrodisiac. She’ll Follow You Anywhere is a movie about aphrodisiacs in which two chemists accidentally create a love potion. This movie starred Richard Vernon who was Slartibartfast in the BBC and television version of the show “The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” the more recent version of which starred Mos Def, who was in a movie called The Woodsman with Kevin Bacon.

Fail 2: Cat nip is enjoyed by Cats. A Snow Leopard is a type of cat, and was also the antagonist in Dreamworks animated film Kung Fu Panda, which starred the voice of Dustin Hoffman, who was in the movie Sleepers with Kevin Bacon.

And the winner:

Cat nip may have an effect on Lions, the animal for which The Lion King is named, which starred Nathan Lane as the voice of Timon, who was in the movie He Said, She Said with Kevin Bacon.

For your own Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon fun, check out the website oracleofbacon.org.