How to Play Redactle

Redactle is a daily word puzzle game where you try to identify a mystery Wikipedia article by guessing words. Every day a new article is chosen, and nearly every word in the article is hidden behind black bars. Your goal is to guess words that appear in the article, gradually revealing its content until you can identify the article's title.

The Basics

When you open Redactle, you'll see a wall of redacted (blacked-out) text. The article structure is preserved - you can see paragraph breaks, headings, and punctuation - but the words themselves are hidden. A handful of very common words like "the", "and", "of", and "is" are left visible to help you read the article's structure.

Type a word into the guess box and press Enter or tap Guess. If your word appears anywhere in the article, every instance of that word is revealed. The guess panel on the right (or bottom on mobile) shows each guess you've made, how many times it appeared, and how much of the article it uncovered.

The puzzle is solved when you guess the exact title of the Wikipedia article. The fewer guesses you need, the better your score.

Understanding the Game Interface

The Article Panel

The main area displays the redacted article. Revealed words appear in their original position with a highlight color. Common stop words (articles, prepositions, conjunctions) are shown in plain text from the start. The article includes the full body text, section headings, and often references to dates, places, and related topics.

The Guess Panel

Your guesses are listed with a hit count showing how many times each word appears in the article. A word that appears many times is a strong signal: it's likely a key topic of the article. The panel also shows your total number of guesses and the percentage of the article you've revealed.

Lemma Matching

Redactle uses lemma-based matching, which means guessing a root word form will also reveal its variations. For example, guessing "run" will also reveal "runs", "running", and "ran". This makes the game more forgiving and lets you uncover more text with each guess. Lemma matching is powered by linguistically-aware word groupings built specifically for Redactle.

Scoring and Statistics

Your score is primarily based on the number of guesses it takes to identify the article. Fewer guesses means a better score. The game also tracks your solve time and accuracy (percentage of guesses that hit at least one word in the article).

After solving a puzzle, you can see how your performance compares to other players. The global statistics show the median number of guesses, the median solve time, and the overall solve rate for each puzzle. Across all games, the median is roughly 69 guesses and about 10 minutes.

Strategies for Better Play

Start Broad, Then Narrow

Begin with category-identifying words. Try broad topics like "country", "city", "born", "species", "war", "album", "university", or "president". These high-frequency Wikipedia words will quickly tell you what kind of article you're looking at. Once you know the category, switch to more specific guesses.

Read the Structure

Pay attention to article length, the number of sections, and the pattern of revealed stop words. A short article with few sections might be about a specific event, while a long article with many subsections is often about a country, a major historical figure, or a broad scientific topic. Section headings in Wikipedia follow predictable patterns - "Early life", "Career", "Discography", "Geography", "Demographics" - and recognizing these patterns helps you narrow down the subject.

Use Hit Counts

When a guess reveals many instances (shown in the guess panel), that word is central to the article's topic. If "film" appears 15 times, you're likely looking at a movie or filmmaker article. If "species" appears 20 times, it's probably a biology article. Let the hit counts guide your next guesses.

Look for Dates and Numbers

Numbers and years are often visible or partially revealed. A cluster of years in the 1940s might suggest a World War II topic. Seeing many four-digit numbers could indicate a history-heavy article. Use these contextual clues to inform your guesses.

Leverage Common Wikipedia Patterns

Wikipedia articles follow consistent structural patterns. The first sentence almost always follows the form "[Title] is a [category]..." which means the very first hidden words are usually the article title. Biographical articles typically have "born" and a year in the first paragraph. Geographic articles mention coordinates, population, and area. Recognizing these templates gets easier with practice and is one of the most effective strategies.

Hints

If you're stuck, Redactle offers an AI-powered hint system. Hints provide a clue about the article's topic without revealing the answer directly. Use hints sparingly: part of the fun is working through the puzzle with your own reasoning. The hint system is designed to nudge you in the right direction, not give away the answer.

Game Modes

Daily Puzzle

Every day at midnight UTC, a new puzzle is released. All players worldwide solve the same article, making it a shared experience. Your streak tracks consecutive days where you've solved the daily puzzle.

Redactle Junior

Junior mode is a friendlier version of Redactle designed for newer players or when you want a quicker game. In Junior mode, you start with three clue words already revealed to hint at the topic. Solved title words are color-highlighted, and the matching system is more forgiving, accepting close synonyms and word roots.

Collections

Collections are themed sets of puzzles curated by players. You might find collections focused on a specific topic like "Nobel Prize Winners", "European Capitals", or "Classic Literature". Collections can be played at your own pace and are a great way to practice specific categories or enjoy themed puzzle sessions with friends.

Leagues

Leagues let you compete with friends or other players over a series of puzzles from a collection. League members solve the same puzzle each day and scores are tracked on a leaderboard. It's a structured way to compete and compare strategies.

Multiplayer

Play the same puzzle simultaneously with friends in real-time. Multiplayer mode lets you see each other's guess counts and race to identify the article first.

Tips for New Players

• Don't be discouraged if your first games take 100+ guesses. The median across all players is about 69 guesses, and new players typically take longer.
• Article patterns are very learnable. After a dozen games, you'll start recognizing structural cues that dramatically reduce your guess count.
• Keep a mental list of "starter words" - broad category words that reliably reveal useful information across many article types.
• Pay attention to what the stop words and punctuation reveal about sentence structure before making your first guess.
• If you're completely stuck, try the hint feature or give up and read the article; studying the revealed text teaches you patterns for future puzzles.

Ready to Play?

Head to the homepage and start today's puzzle. Every day is a new challenge, and every puzzle teaches you something new about the world. Good luck!