Wordle is little whereas Redactle is large. In contrast to Wordle, which asks you to decipher a single five-letter word, Redactle offers you with a completely blacked-out Wikipedia page, not even a stub. You may guess one word at a time, and you have an infinite number of guesses. You even get some freebies to begin with, such as "was," "and," and "for." So why is it so difficult?

The purpose of the article is to identify the exact person, object, or location being discussed. In Wordle, knowing a few common letters is usually sufficient to get you the majority of the way there; if I receive hits on letters like E, T, and R, I don't have to do much more. But in Redactle, does knowing that "he" occurs 159 times actually help? Maybe. Sort of.

How it feels to play Redactle

I'll describe a game I played yesterday (no spoilers for today). The page was lengthy, which makes sense given that it was taken from one of Wikipedia's 10,000 essential articles; hence, it is unlikely to be a stub or anything esoteric.

With headers in huge print, the structure of a Wikipedia article was evident, however the majority of text in the headings were obscured. The abundance of "The ___ of ____" and "Regarding the ____" in the bulleted list indicated that this article may be about a prolific author. And since the page is formatted with a monospace typeface, you may make educated predictions about the lengths of words even if you do not know what the words are.

But does it involve a person? There is no area in the title for a first and last name. The first few words were separated by a hyphen, which reminded me of French names with hyphens.

I began with "birth" and received three results. So maybe a human. I searched "France" on a whim and received 19 results. "Book" yielded twenty results, however "author" yielded just three, with none in the opening phrase indicating what a person is most known for. I found myself seeking a balance between precise, uncommon terms (which would provide more information) and popular ones that often appear in bios (which would be more likely to be hits). There were many results for "king," so I thought of the American/British/French revolution. Few for "England" or "America" though. I picked "woman" because I anticipated that a well-known female would be characterized as the "first lady to perform such-and-such." One strike. So I tried "he" and got 159 results, including some in the introduction. OK, it's a male. There are no results for "playwright", "Spain", "medical", "1700", or "1800". Finally, I chose to emphasize France by guessing "French" (34 hits), "revolution" (2 hits), and "enlightenment" (8 hits). There was illumination in the very first phrase.

There are only a limited number of Enlightenment figures renowned enough to be included in the top Wikipedia articles. Let's attempt a renowned person; maybe a miss will reveal a partner or influence. Voltaire? Yep. The whole article was disclosed. I figured it out after 46 guesses with an accuracy of 89.13%.

How difficult is Redactle?
Yesterday, despite the difficulty and frustration, I scored close to the median (43, according to the day's statistics). Similar to Wordle, everyone receives the same puzzle every day, with some days being more challenging than others. On a Reddit post about the game, several users highlight the need of 250 guesses to answer a difficult entry.

When do we receive a new Redactle?
Daily puzzles are released at 11 a.m. CDT, which is 12 p.m. Eastern Time.

What is the best Redactle strategy?
So far, I am learning as I go. "enlightenment" and "revolution" would have been effective follow-ups to "France" rather than "hail-mary" plays late in the game.

In addition, I'm going to start paying closer attention to the headlines and first paragraphs of Wikipedia pages. For example, Voltaire was referred to be a "writer" rather than a "author."

A Reddit discussion on strategy argues that the following are excellent clue words:

“War”
"City against country"
"First" and "final"
He, she, or other pronouns may be used.
Regional descriptors such as "European" or "American"
"Century" (and if that fails, guessing numbers such as "16th")
There are more recommendations in that thread for recognizing the structure of specific words, such as the birth and death dates of a person and the semicolons used by Wikipedia when translating a foreign language. Try it out, be attentive, and have fun!