DEV Community

Tiki Taka
Tiki Taka

Posted on

Are You Smarter Than a Monkey? Here is Your Chance to Find Out - We Built a World Cup 2026 Prediction Game Where You Compete Against a Real Monkey

We just shipped TikiTaka, a prediction game for the 2026 World Cup. You predict all 104 matches, pick the winner, runner-up, top scorer, make groups with friends. Free, no accounts required, works in 10 languages.

The monkey part

So every group has a monkey in it. Not a metaphor. Every morning at 10:00, the system takes screenshots from live zoo webcams: baboons in San Diego, gorillas in Atlanta, snow monkeys in Japan, bonobos in Congo. Then it analyzes what the monkeys are doing and turns that into match predictions.

There are five different analysis methods and the median wins. If a gorilla is sleeping, that's a 0-0.

This started as a joke during a late night coding session. We thought it'd be funny to add a random monkey competitor. Then we realized people got genuinely competitive about beating it, and it kind of took over the whole project.

Why this exists

I kept looking for a simple prediction game to play with friends during the World Cup and everything was either trying to sell me something or required downloading an app. So we built one.

It's a PWA, so it works on any device without installing anything. tikitaka.vip if you want to try it.

Happy to answer questions about how the monkey prediction system actually works, because honestly it's the weirdest code I've ever written.

Top comments (0)