blank blank in the blank of blankety blank, blank blank?
April 16, 2022 1:34 AM   Subscribe

Redactle is a daily browser game where the user tries to determine the subject of a random obfuscated Wikipedia article, chosen from Wikipedia's 10,000 Vital Articles (Level 4).
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs (133 comments total) 36 users marked this as a favorite
 
That took FOREVER to solve, but now I want do another one.
posted by colin.jaquiery at 4:19 AM on April 16, 2022 [4 favorites]


This is neat - thanks for posting! Took me 114 guesses - which seemed crazy bad, especially as I got blank, blank, and blank out so early. And I didn’t know the list of the blanks - else probably could have gotten within 20-30. Then I saw the global median and averages and don’t feel quite as slow.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 4:19 AM on April 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


My partner got it in 14 guesses while I was still contemplating my second guess. What a nerdy freak, I'm mad impressed. :o
posted by bigendian at 5:06 AM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


It differs from Wordle in that it's easy for an answer to be just completely outside your field and impossible to guess without use of web search. Still, the process of revealing words one at a time to reveal the article is really engaging. I think you should get a "free turn" if you reveal at least one word in the article with your guess.
posted by JHarris at 5:20 AM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


Also, it kind of seems like you should get plurals and conjugates for free.
posted by JHarris at 5:54 AM on April 16, 2022 [12 favorites]


I agree, one should get plurals and conjugates for free. (18 guesses, won't play again.)
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:12 AM on April 16, 2022


holy crap! 151 guesses, but i got it!
posted by mittens at 6:16 AM on April 16, 2022


JHarris seanmpuckett From the help: Shift+Enter will attempt to automatically pluralize or singularize your guess. There are certain edge cases (e.g. guessing a nonsense word like "asdf") where this will submit nonsense guesses.
posted by Erinaceus europaeus at 6:22 AM on April 16, 2022 [5 favorites]


Oh man, I guess my 8-guess success is a bigger deal than I'd thought
~gloats~
posted by needs more cowbell at 6:47 AM on April 16, 2022 [4 favorites]


Hey, this is fun! I got it in 72, so not impressive, but it took a while to figure out how it worked. Can't wait for tomorrow.
posted by mumimor at 7:00 AM on April 16, 2022


Jesus you lot. It took me and my partner 400 guesses... But we got it!
posted by Braeburn at 7:05 AM on April 16, 2022 [4 favorites]


I learned about this and started guessing yesterday, and after 100+ guesses I suspected what the concept was but couldn't remember the actual name/term, so I had to mull that over overnight until I remembered.

I think the most fun aspect for me was the studying the punctuation and trying to make guesses from how a sentence/information was formatted. I'm interested to see how the next round goes!
posted by mixedmetaphors at 8:30 AM on April 16, 2022


Fun stuff, got it in 73 guesses.
posted by Beethoven's Sith at 8:36 AM on April 16, 2022


Ugh, I’m humbled, 265 guesses! And my 126th guess was a plural that got zero hits, but if I had guessed the singular instead it would have cracked it for me.
posted by ejs at 9:13 AM on April 16, 2022


158 for me. I guessed a word early on that seemed more important than it was and it sent me down the wrong path for a while. Fascinating concept though. Going to give it to my objectively smarter partner and see how they do.
posted by brook horse at 9:31 AM on April 16, 2022


80 for me, with an accuracy of 63.75%. 10 of my guesses were the digits, which helped with the accuracy percentage, but gave little to no help on the article.
posted by Happy Monkey at 9:45 AM on April 16, 2022


For some reason I was served a second Redactle in the same day and this time I got it in 71. Improving! Also, more familiar with the subject matter.
posted by ejs at 10:02 AM on April 16, 2022


Accidentally closed window, opened to a new puzzle. (& i think my friend may have another.) Maybe a time zone thing?
posted by anshuman at 10:07 AM on April 16, 2022


I see the comment before mine … it must reset at 1pm eastern US time.
posted by anshuman at 10:08 AM on April 16, 2022


Wow, this is insanely hard but I am going to keep going. 115 guesses and I still have no slight foggy clue. Funny, I can do a substitution-cipher quote puzzle pretty fast and Wordle before it was bought by the Empire, but I am completely adrift.

You people that got it in six guesses can bite it, by the way.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 10:20 AM on April 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


After a few hundred guesses, feeling like I was hardly any closer than when I started, I cheated and Googled the longest phrase I'd managed to fill in.

The first search result was the right answer.

I'll give it another shot tomorrow.
posted by box at 10:39 AM on April 16, 2022


#10 was a lot easier than #9 for me--got it in 22 and am feeling smug.
posted by mixedmetaphors at 10:44 AM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


I just got #10 in 52, and I'm okay with that.
posted by box at 10:48 AM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


Duh. 170 guesses to get it, and it was so easy a child could have done it!

Hey, it’s time for a new one almost!
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 11:19 AM on April 16, 2022


Whew, it took me 298 tries to get #9 and 133 to get #10. I'm improving, right??
posted by moonmilk at 11:57 AM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


Oh I like this one. Not as shot-in-the-dark as semantle. Stays fun the whole time instead of wildly oscillating between fun and infuriating.
posted by rustybullrake at 1:04 PM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


I got #10 in 26 but I'm quite sure that was just luck. I was completely stumped and ready to just close the tab several times, but then I randomly guessed the general overarching related topic, and then I thought, "hm, what related thing would be one of the top 10,000 articles?" and THEN it just was obvious.

I'm curious - in the spirit of Ruining the Fun of Wordle with Strategy - if you leaned toward guessing some of the words in the list of Level 2 vital articles, if that would tend to fill in enough to make a big difference.

This is a lot of fun, and seems like a pretty great use of internet time waster puzzle time. (Which is to say, if I'm going to waste some time playing a puzzle, this sort of thing is a lot more engaging than yet another round of Freecell.)

But ALSO, I did not know about the Vital Articles and their five levels, and now that I do, I am also going to be doing some internet time wasting reading those articles.

I am delighted to know about Vital Articles (ooh, which is also the name of my next band), and delighted to know about Redactle (which really should be a dinosaur). Thank you so much for posting this, Ten Cold Hot Dogs!
posted by kristi at 3:19 PM on April 16, 2022 [3 favorites]


I enjoyed this, thanks. 171 guesses here, though some were typos as I should really be asleep. Waiting eagerly for the change to the next day's one.
posted by paduasoy at 4:01 PM on April 16, 2022


which really should be a dinosaur

I was thinking a Pokémon. Its evolved form is Classifistoise, who has the power to mark opponents’ attacks Top Secret in the interest of national security.
posted by box at 4:03 PM on April 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


After hours of this nonsense, only now do I find out that clicking on the words in your guess list jumps to them, ctrl-f style.
I have been scrolling through whole puzzles looking for words with single digit numbers of instances like a fool.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 4:53 PM on April 16, 2022 [4 favorites]


Erinaceus europaeus: From the help: Shift+Enter will attempt to automatically pluralize or singularize your guess. There are certain edge cases (e.g. guessing a nonsense word like "asdf") where this will submit nonsense guesses.

I discovered that Settings also has that as an option, so you wouldn't have to remember to press Shift every time ... but from trying it out via Settings, it looks like it basically makes two guesses for every guess, so if I typed in, say, "user", it logs guesses for both "user" and "users", and my guess count goes up by 2.

Hm.
posted by kristi at 5:16 PM on April 16, 2022


Really fun. Took me 168.
posted by Miko at 5:27 PM on April 16, 2022


Thirty-four, but I’ve edited that article.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 5:47 PM on April 16, 2022 [10 favorites]


Wow. This is amazing. My mornings now start with Worldle, Wordle, Heardle, and this.
posted by johnxlibris at 6:58 PM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


Okay 108 for the late day one today.
I gave up on this morning’s one and by the time I went back it had changed.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 7:12 PM on April 16, 2022


On shift+enter, you automatically guess plurals with it, but it still counts as separate guesses.
posted by JHarris at 7:22 PM on April 16, 2022


I have woken up in the middle of the night and can't sleep. This is perfect for that. #10 in 42. I think there could be a method to this, if I was more clear-headed.
posted by mumimor at 8:13 PM on April 16, 2022


#10 in 192 with 48% accuracy. Great fun. Wasted a lot of guesses by having the automatic pluralize enabled, and by guessing every letter in the alphabet searching for initials.
posted by McNulty at 8:47 PM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


#10 in 23 guesses, but I blew it open with one lucky guess.
posted by storybored at 9:07 PM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


This hurt to play, but I couldn't stop. I do really like the idea though. Will def give it another chance or three, cheers!
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 9:48 PM on April 16, 2022


In case anyone is feeling stupid, it took me 391 guesses to get there.
posted by maxwelton at 11:22 PM on April 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


261 guesses for #10.

I have a problem. #11 won't load. If I go to the site, it just gives me my stats for #11. I deleted my cookies for redactle, and I #10 again.

I normally use Chrome, but I tried using Firefox, and it just gave me #10.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:33 AM on April 17, 2022


Is # 11 supposed to have loaded?

Anyway, I have one "trick" I used for #10: I didn't spend points on obvious words that weren't relevant to the question, like "commonly referred", which I guesses right away but didn't fill in because it wouldn't add to my understanding.
posted by mumimor at 8:11 AM on April 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


Right, when I did #9 I tried to uncover as many words as possible; when I did #10, once I guessed “War” I didn’t bother to uncover what was obviously “World” or “II.”
posted by ejs at 8:37 AM on April 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


I have a problem. #11 won't load.

I'm on the East Coast and the site gave me #9 yesterday and #10 today. I believe it's a one per day setup like the original Wordle, so #10 is what you should be seeing.
posted by needs more cowbell at 8:49 AM on April 17, 2022


It says “A new puzzle will be available every day at 11:00 AM CDT (16:00 UTC).” That’s in ten minutes.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 8:52 AM on April 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


I, um, just got #11 in five guesses. I like this game.
posted by needs more cowbell at 9:30 AM on April 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


Just got #11 in 25 guesses (previous games took 147 & 150, but my husband & I were playing side-by-side and sharing successful avenues).
This is fun.
Thanks for sharing.
posted by cheshyre at 10:22 AM on April 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


Thanks. Yes, #11 just took longer than I expected to show up. 92 guesses.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 10:40 AM on April 17, 2022


52 guesses. Those italics made me think it was going to be easy, but I guessed almost every category that would be italicized except for the one it wound up being, which is weird because I used to have a job in that category.
posted by ejs at 11:40 AM on April 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


#11 took me 86, I wouldn't have guessed it was among the Vital Articles, because I am not American. Still, it was fun.
posted by mumimor at 1:31 PM on April 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


It's a 9 day for me. I got #11 in 9 guesses and also lasted in survivle for 9 guesses.
posted by Obscure Reference at 2:51 PM on April 17, 2022


#11 in 53 guesses, got thrown off by a word that matched :)
posted by storybored at 3:58 PM on April 17, 2022


#11 took me 228. Went down some erroneous rabbit holes.
posted by paduasoy at 4:21 PM on April 17, 2022


10! I got #11 in 10 guesses because my 5th and 6th guesses didn’t fill in the blanks I expected them to, but my 7th and 8th sure did.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 5:36 PM on April 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


tigrrrlily and I just did #11 in 12 guesses, with 100% accuracy. Yay!
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 6:54 PM on April 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


Ooh, saw this in the sidebar and tried it for the first time today. I got #11 in 16 guesses so I'm feeling smart. I was convinced it was somehow related to The Hobbit at first, though.
posted by Tesseractive at 8:30 PM on April 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


This is fun! 18 for #11 today, which is a lot better than the 284 that I got yesterday for #10. Seems to depends on how relevant your entry point is. Yesterday, I got bogged down in the timeline and technical details, and it took me a long time to leave atomic bombs. Today I was stuck on Narnia/Lord of the Rings, but that was an early failure, and then I spotted "__________, _._." and was off to the races.
posted by yuwtze at 8:47 PM on April 17, 2022 [4 favorites]


I am not going to brag about my improvement on #11, other than to note its existence. However, I will mention that it is super easy to fat-finger a long word and only notice after many many guesses that were steered away from reality by the error. There should be a warning if the word you entered isn’t found in the English language. Though I’m sure I’d find a creative way to bone that up too.

This is much more fun than my other daily puzzles.

I am impressed that no one (yet) has posted anything that considered even remotely a spoiler for one of the puzzles, which I guess shows the titanic discipline of the ordinary MF-er. I too did not realize you could click on a guess to see the instances. Thanks for mentioning it.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 4:50 AM on April 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


I like it! I'm terrible at it, but I like it!
posted by BekahVee at 6:03 AM on April 18, 2022


Got it in 19 today!
posted by Miko at 6:35 AM on April 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


#12 in 39.

I think I had a dream about this game last night or the night before, because there are things I thought I remembered about the interface that no longer appear to be there.

I slept weird last night because I had to get up early, so after the dream where the cast of the Fast and Furious franchise all crashed at my house and ordered pizza, a dream about redactle is unsurprising.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 10:19 AM on April 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


#12 took me *way* to long. I got hung up in the wrong century and on the wrong geographic region...*sigh*
posted by inflatablekiwi at 11:33 AM on April 18, 2022


#12 just went really badly for me, but mostly because I had one of those days where an important word just did not appear. I knew what it was about -- I heard a radio documentary about it a few days ago -- but I couldn't remember that word, and I felt it would be cheating to go back and listen to the documentary. Well, I should have, because in the end it took me 171 guesses at a 26% accuracy to get there. Why did I just spend so much of my life on that?

(Actually probably because I am in the middle of a massive anxiety attack and this is somehow soothing).
posted by mumimor at 1:03 PM on April 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


> and then I spotted "__________, _._." and was off to the races.
I noticed that too, but I thought “now I know what it is I'm not wasting a guess on it” but if I had just entered “__________” I would have known it was in the subject and save me 30 guesses or so.

On another notice, “war” seams to appear in every featured article and guessing it will get you absolutely nowhere.
posted by farlukar at 1:38 PM on April 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


Ha, I noticed that about “war” too.

With #12, it took me 21 guesses to figure out what the answer was, while knowing for a fact I didn’t know the word that would solve the puzzle. I cheated by googling the word and putting it in as guess number 22 to achieve closure. Sorry for selfishly throwing off the global stats, everybody!
posted by ejs at 2:23 PM on April 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


Wow, a lot of wasted guesses on #12. After guess 70, I knew I would not know the word to solve it and had to look it up, like some others did.
posted by tigrrrlily at 7:51 PM on April 18, 2022


I got one of them in 13 guesses! I got another one in 300+ guesses! I've given up entirely on others! And I'm learning ▮▮▮▮. I actually logged on to post this. I am ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ hooked.
posted by not_on_display at 10:44 PM on April 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


Okay, #12 took me over 300. I was in multiple incorrect temporal and spatial locations. I left it alone multiple times, but I ended up scrawling various things-to-guess on some notepaper, and I ended up with what looks like the world's most bizarre grocery and/or hit list. (Obviously, I'm still having a blast with this game!)
posted by mixedmetaphors at 7:01 AM on April 19, 2022


I gave up on #11 at guess 259. Like others, I could see that I wouldn't know the word. Currently stuck on #12 at 316. Didn't help that I turned the settings to "automatically pluralise" yesterday but they don't seem to have stuck. So thought I had tried some plurals today but hadn't.

Are the answers for past ones somewhere? I'd like to see #11 but don't want to Google in case I find #12 by accident.
posted by paduasoy at 11:29 AM on April 19, 2022


Whew, today's (#13) took me 128 but was very satisfying.
posted by Miko at 11:44 AM on April 19, 2022


Fifty-five for me today (#13).

I suspected correctly that some redacted words were in non-Latin alphabets. I guess I don’t care about how guessing non-Latin words works, because I didn’t know what they might be.

It’s interesting to look at the shape of a redacted sentence, think “oh this word could be X,” and be wrong but have the guess appear elsewhere. It’s entertaining to read the article afterwards and do a post-mortem on which guesses were inspired versus which were dumb luck.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 12:00 PM on April 19, 2022 [3 favorites]


The answer to yesterday’s puzzle is in the “info” box, but there doesn’t appear to be an archive.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 12:13 PM on April 19, 2022


WHOA I got #13 in TWO. (That was NOT what I expected. Guess 1 was a relatively informed guess based on punctuation, but I just figured guess 2 had SOMETHING to do with the topic and would guide my next few dozen guesses.)

By contrast, #12 was really hard for me and highlights Important Topics I Should Know More About.

This is fun.

It's a little maddening to have to wait A WHOLE DAY for another puzzle, but it's probably a good thing, or I'd spend all my time Redactling.
posted by kristi at 2:01 PM on April 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


After thinking I had only dreamed it, and giving up, I found the share button.

I solved today's Redactle (#13) in 110 guesses with an accuracy of 43.64%.

This one was tough. I found all kinds of stuff that appeared after the first two paragraphs, but stubbornly refused to give me anything I could use. Combine that with my thinking I had guessed an easy word that I somehow hadn’t, and I had a harder time with this one than I might have.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 3:04 PM on April 19, 2022


Argh. 87 guesses and 37.93% accuracy. Like others, I got the general field right very early on, but then stalled.

I wonder what it is about sentence structure that makes you guess a field of knowledge correctly. Maybe there is a style of writing that comes with each field that you can intuitively recognize, just like there are certain MeFites that have a very distinct voice you can recognize right when you read the first sentence of a post or comment.
posted by mumimor at 4:04 PM on April 19, 2022


I did pretty well on today's, my best yet, got it in 40 with 67.5% accuracy.

When the answer was Microwave Oven a few days ago (It's okay to talk about it now, right? You can't go back and play old ones?), I hearkened that it had to do with physics before that it had to do with cooking and food, which messed me up a little.
posted by JHarris at 4:59 PM on April 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


I didn’t do great with today’s—spent too long looking at one tree instead of the forest, which is very on-brand for me. But I got there eventually.
posted by box at 5:07 PM on April 19, 2022 [2 favorites]


All of these things are in Wikipedia's level 4 "vital articles": Journal des sçavans, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Four occupations, Nowruz, Procyon, Carina Nebula, Great Attractor, Valence bond theory, Delian League, Indo-Scythians, Caucasian Albania, Elam, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Antonin Artaud. I could go on for a few thousand.

My point is that if the daily game is being chosen randomly(?), this neat puzzle is often not going to be solvable by a general English-speaking audience (me), and I think I'm going to drift away from it, even though I really like the idea. There are loads of historical people in the People section that I have never heard of. The only reason I write it is that I know I'm in good company. I desperately hope they hand-select the articles. If Wordle used as answers the other ~5000 words you can Scrabble-guess like "ourie, vrouw, talaq" I don't think it would be too popular.

At that point, the neat thing to do would be to use the "Give Up" button to read a bit about the subject which one could never solve. But I cannot find a "Give Up" button.
posted by sylvanshine at 4:58 AM on April 20, 2022 [2 favorites]


I hate when a Famous Person is a crossword clue. It is the most common reason for me to pull away from the crossword and have to look up the answer online. (Though I do try to structure my search so that the results are encyclopedia-ish factual articles, rather than Crossword Puzzle Cheat Dot Com.)

I missed the Redactle the other day, when the title was “Atahualpa.” I would have also been stumped by the crossword clue “Last Inca Emperor.”

I haven’t yet quit crosswords about it, though. In fact, one of the reasons I quit Sudokus but continue doing crosswords is that, when the crossword stumps me, I usually learn something from it.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 6:30 AM on April 20, 2022 [1 favorite]


I'm slightly surprised to see my “war in every article” rule confirmed in #14, about a ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ ffs
posted by farlukar at 10:33 AM on April 20, 2022 [2 favorites]


Yeah - war is one of my early top 10 words I check for and #14 sent me down a rabbit hole. Got it in 65…finally.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 12:38 PM on April 20, 2022


#14, 297. Oooof.
posted by Miko at 1:12 PM on April 20, 2022


If I know that I don't know the answer (which was the case for "[blank] was the last Inca Emperor"), I've allowed myself to look at any wikipedia article that contains the words that I've already guessed, like "Inca Empire", and see if I can find it that way. In fact, it might be fun if there was an "easy mode" that restored wikipedia's pop-up article summaries over words that you've unlocked. (I'm not sure that variant would have helped me with the Emperor, though.)
posted by Lirp at 4:27 PM on April 20, 2022 [5 favorites]


#15 - just way too many attempts. At least no war in it this time….
posted by inflatablekiwi at 10:51 AM on April 21, 2022


Oh man, just eleven today. I noticed some unredacted common words displayed as subscripts, which narrowed the category way down.

I’ll probably edit the article to refer to a war later.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 2:43 PM on April 21, 2022 [3 favorites]


Some words that help when too many words are missing: when, that, other, which, also, its, who.
#15 - 100, tough one for me!
posted by storybored at 7:26 PM on April 21, 2022


Missed a day, but I got 15 in 27, after functionally giving up because I thought I would be too busy today.

And because I stopped after about 20 guesses yesterday.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 5:20 AM on April 22, 2022


250 for teday's. Anyone want to write about strategy for solving them more quickly?
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 5:54 AM on April 22, 2022 [1 favorite]


78 for today.

@NancyLebovitz - very good question. I've been starting with generic nouns to try to narrow down the subject. My 6th guess was music. Then I focus very strongly on the first few paragraphs. Trying to get some impression. Do those blanks look like dates? If so it's likely a person, so guess "he" because likely male bias.
posted by storybored at 5:17 PM on April 22, 2022 [1 favorite]


#16 in 54. I'm really enjoying this puzzle.

It helps to narrow down what kind of article you're looking at. Seeing "Early Life" or "popular culture" or one of the other common wikipedia headings can tell you if you're dealing with a person or a concept or an event.
posted by JDHarper at 7:10 AM on April 23, 2022 [3 favorites]


#19 beat me up.

In my first 100 guesses only 22 give a hit….and mostly because I started trying random letters and numbers……. Finally got it but honestly essentially had the first paragraph done except what type of the thing it was……so it just become a grind to try and think of the different names for the thing - ugh - fun but infuriating
posted by inflatablekiwi at 10:57 AM on April 25, 2022


#19 in 81. I got in the zone early on, but don't know enough about the subject to do anything more than flail about thereafter. Tomorrow for the Arts Block!?
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:44 PM on April 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


I know this is an automated process but it is annoying to see how mangled certain articles get when they go through the redactle engine
posted by JDHarper at 5:28 PM on April 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


Whenever I get “law” to hit, and I see “law of” in the text, I can’t help but guess thermodynamics next. I am always disappointed….but one day I’ll find out some Incan Emperor played a part in it.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 5:53 AM on April 26, 2022 [3 favorites]


#20 in 13. Woot!

Still no thermodynamics…..
posted by inflatablekiwi at 10:34 AM on April 26, 2022


Yes, yesterday’s (“exponential distribution”) had lots of intra- and inter-paragraph mathematics that was just omitted. This meant the middle had a number of one-line paragraphs like “the mean of the distribution is given by” followed by another one-line paragraph referring to some other mathematical fact.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 11:39 AM on April 26, 2022 [3 favorites]


Distribution! Gosh darn it.

Got today's in 21! Woot!
posted by Miko at 9:01 AM on April 27, 2022 [1 favorite]


So you got 21 in 21? That’s a royal salute to a royal salute in bingo calls….
posted by inflatablekiwi at 12:01 PM on April 27, 2022 [1 favorite]


I have only solved three of the puzzles so far, even though I've played it every day since #6—I give up when I hit guess #300 or so. I spend a lot of guesses on single letters, roman and modern numerals, ordinal numbers spelled out or not... I don't have a solid strategy other than that yet. But those letters and numbers are helpful in knowing generally what the general subject heading would be. Math? Euro Royals or Popes? Geologic time?

Of the two puzzles I answered correctly on this machine, I've averaged 100 guesses with 55% accuracy. I bet I can trim that down once I get the feel for often-used words like early, list, etc. EVEN THEN it's tough and I'm addicted.
posted by not_on_display at 1:43 PM on April 27, 2022


My most fruitful guesses are based on filling words into sentences that have a characteristic shape, and then having those words fortuitously appear in other contexts. When the article was “carrot,” the first sentence was something like
A carrot (Genus species subspecies) is a root vegetable, commonly grown for food, …
The sentence structure where the genus and species appear in parentheses as part of the subject of the first sentence suggested strongly that was some sort of organism. Similarly, yesterday’s article began like
Mary Louise “Meryl” Streep (born Month XX, 19XX) is an American actress, sometimes called “the greatest actress of her generation”
From the two-word title and the four-word noun phrase with one word quoted, I guessed it was about a famous person who goes by a nickname; the present-tense “is” suggested I would find “born” but not “died” in the parentheses. The longer phrase in quotes didn’t have enough surrounding punctuation to the a properly source quotation, so I guessed it was some kind of introductory superlative.

When the solution was Frederic Chopin, I guessed “child” to fill in part of the “early life” section, and found a sentence that looked like it started with “A child prodigy.” It wasn’t Mozart, but Mozart turned up as an influence, along with [].[]. Bach.

There are some important glue words which aren’t quite common enough to be unredacted. High-value guesses include “all,” “some,” “any”; “always,” “usually,” “commonly,” “sometimes,” “also”; “that” and “which”; “when,” “where,” “then,” “there”; “he” and “she” and “they” and their possessives. Plausible phrases are “commonly known as” or “also called” or “in order to” or the like.

As a minor spoiler to the current puzzle #21, I guessed one of the glue words in the preceding paragraph, and it appeared twice with two different meanings in a heavily-punctuated sentence, in a way that instantly narrowed down the domain of the article quite a bit. (Although that revealing guess was #5, while the article title was guess #60, so perhaps it didn’t help me as much as it felt like.)
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 8:55 PM on April 27, 2022 [1 favorite]


Yeah I got today's in 556 and still felt like a fucking champion
posted by not_on_display at 11:50 PM on April 27, 2022 [5 favorites]


Not only that, but my occupation also has an incedental involvement with the subject of today's puzzle.

556 guesses. it hurt but I feel like I just won the Boston Marathon.
posted by not_on_display at 11:51 PM on April 27, 2022 [2 favorites]


Red face for #21, which is exactly where I have spent my last several academic decades, my 20-something daughter nailed it in exactly half my guesses. There may be wood-for-the-trees perspective issues; because I got #20 in 3 after spotting "Out of ██████" in the 2nd para.
posted by BobTheScientist at 7:44 AM on April 28, 2022 [1 favorite]


#23 screwed me over. 400+ guesses. Ugh
posted by inflatablekiwi at 12:25 PM on April 29, 2022 [1 favorite]


#23 drove me round the twist too. Half my scattergun guesses yielded nil hits: 20th, agree, agreement, argument, arts, asia, attempt, author, background, band, beginning, believed, biography, brief, certainty, considered, conversation, cookery, created, culture, current, customs, dance, dentistry, depend, determine, discrete, elsewhere, equivalent, ethics, exact, exo, experts, explain, expose, felt, guess , humours, information, integrate, interaction, land, lay, logic, man, mathematics, measure, moment, musical, opt, painting, paragraph, physics, potted, puppet, reconcile, ring, sea, think, truth, way, wheels, write. I rather like the idea that you might also take more than 100 plunges to get to the truth but without doubt your null hits will be different from mine . . . even if we were identical twins separated at birth.
posted by BobTheScientist at 1:09 AM on April 30, 2022


Some early guesses that have helped me a lot on several of these are: "be, been, had, was, were, use, used, not, he, she". These tend to fill out sentences enough to suggest more specific words. Also, "history, century, year, years" are reliable matches. Sometimes it pays to try pairs of words that are complementary, like "many / few", "common / rare", "often / rarely", "modern / ancient", "early / late", etc.

I managed to get #23 in 72 guesses. So far, I have done 15 of these with my guess counts ranging from 24 (on #20) to 392 (on #12). Most of the time, my scores have been worse than the global stats, but I'm personally happy when I find the solution in less than 100 guesses.

A confession: On numbers 9, 12, and 19, I had to resort to opening duckduckgo in a separate window and searching for a phrase that I had managed to uncover, which really felt like cheating, but otherwise I'd still be stuck on those.

I'm enjoying these a lot -- many thanks to the OP for this thread. I have been doing Wordle, Guess My Word, and the LA Times crossword and daily solitaire games every day, but Redactle is my current favorite.
posted by TwoToneRow at 2:23 AM on April 30, 2022 [3 favorites]


People who often have more than 100 guesses, are you playing on a phone or a computer? I've found it's way easier if I can see bigger blocks of text at once, so I only play on my laptop, and overall I do pretty well.
posted by needs more cowbell at 4:47 PM on April 30, 2022


On my phone - got today (#24) in 80 something but agree it would be easier on a larger screen
posted by inflatablekiwi at 5:25 PM on April 30, 2022 [1 favorite]


Ok I nearly rage quit yesterday after guessing Babylon and Babylonian relatively early and then taking like 80 more guesses before I tried Babylonia.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 4:52 PM on May 3, 2022 [6 favorites]


I had to cheat to get today’s (#28). The wikipedia article mentions it has multiple issues. Yeah - no fucking kidding it does. The first being that I have never heard that word before in my life.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 10:31 AM on May 4, 2022 [1 favorite]


I had to look up “Babylonia.” I had Babylon, Ur, the Assyrian and Hittite Empires, and Hammurabi. I knew that Hammurabi lived in one of those early cities, but if I ever knew all their names I don’t any more. I feel no regret about looking up Hammurabi and (re-?) learning that was actually in charge of all those Mesopotamian cities.

Apart from that, I’ve needed the most guesses for the most common things: “screw,” “hospital,” “carrot,” “snow,” “rope.” Those felt like opening a dictionary to “had” or “put” and discovering that the entry is four pages long and there are sixty definitions.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 12:56 PM on May 4, 2022 [2 favorites]


#29, 183 guesses, 42.62%, was not expecting that!
posted by roolya_boolya at 12:19 PM on May 5, 2022 [1 favorite]


Yeah - #29 was a good one. The last word of the first sentence came out early for me and took me in an entirely different direction for a long time. Is it a type of that thing? Is it how that thing comes into existence? Ugh.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 12:28 PM on May 5, 2022


lol I managed the miracle of getting #29 with a mere 20 guesses... all because a friend texted me first, saying that "today's Redactle is so good!", and knowing their weird sense of humour...

Payback for #28 which of course I gave up on after realising there was no way I'd guess that nonsense.

I think that's what I like best about this puzzle structure: it's really satisfying to look over your list of guesses when you win and marvel at how a mind can jump about. I know that some of it is strategy (always/never guess "war", etc) but it's still really neat to see your own brain in action. Utterly gratifying.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 8:51 AM on May 6, 2022 [1 favorite]


I gathered all my guesses for Redactles #21 - #29 into a spreadsheet. D
iscarded all the score 0 words [because that's just my "mind" cavorting about]. Then sorted the remaining ~350 words alphabetically. 50 of those have been successful in two or more different Redactles. That's the list to start the process when I start with No Clues. Those words are the interface between my mind and that of Dr Redactle; and include development, evolution, science and species. If the choice of the daily Redactle was random, this approach probably wouldn't work. The nerdadjacent hive-mind of Wikipedia will also lean that way when populating the list of 10,000 Level 4 Vital Articles.
But I'm retiring for a bit now: overwhelmed by seeing my own brain in action.
posted by BobTheScientist at 10:47 AM on May 6, 2022 [1 favorite]


Yeah it would be neat to write down what you think the thing may be for each guess. Like - I guess France because I think the article relates to European Royalty. I imagine my paths to the answer would be wild
posted by inflatablekiwi at 10:59 AM on May 6, 2022


I no longer consider it "cheating" if I resort to doing a web search using a sentence that I've managed to un-redact -- especially if I'm just flailing around after 200 or so guesses and the solution comes up in the top two or three hits. At worst, I think of it as a draw.

I had also guessed "Babylon" on #26, about a hundred tries before I finally went with plan B. And on #28, I was pretty sure of the right answer, but was way-the-hell-off in my attempt at spelling it.

Actually got today's (#30) totally honestly, with 82% accuracy to boot -- bringing me up to 22 consecutive solves so far -- woo-hoo!
posted by TwoToneRow at 1:46 PM on May 6, 2022 [1 favorite]


I started calculating a composite score for each solution by dividing the number of guesses by the accuracy. I feel like this does a pretty good job of capturing the interesting challenge of redactle: getting it in fewer guesses, without too many missteps. For example, on #24, I took 327 guesses with 48.93% accuracy, for a composite score of 668.3. This is my worst score (not counting the ones where I just gave up and did some research).
posted by Lirp at 5:00 PM on May 7, 2022


"Literary genre" from a few days ago was SO HARD. Even after getting clues about Ancient Greece and books, I could not figure out even the conceptual category of what I was trying to find. (And it was fun! But frustrating!)
posted by mixedmetaphors at 3:16 PM on May 9, 2022


"Literary genre" was a stinker. I had genre, but I don't use "literary" that way.

I finally cheated a little. Did some googling, and saw a mention of "literary".
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 5:28 PM on May 9, 2022


137 guesses before I got today's. I'm working with a buddy of mine, it's fun tag teaming. I don't think i would have gotten it without team work!
posted by storybored at 11:11 AM on May 10, 2022


A lucky double entendre on #34 took me to a phrase that appears only in a small number of contexts. Total of ten guesses, with 100% hits.

I’m reminded today of Shannon’s experiments to measure the information content of printed text (about two bits per letter) by showing people incomplete texts and measuring when they were able to fill in the gaps. If Redactle is keeping track of its users’ guesses, there could be an interesting information-theory measurement in there.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 2:14 PM on May 10, 2022


What was that lucky double entendre?!
posted by storybored at 2:39 PM on May 10, 2022


In the interest of keeping the thread spoiler-free, but not expecting to remember tomorrow, I sent you a MeMail.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 3:51 PM on May 10, 2022 [1 favorite]


...i just figured out that, when "pluralize entries" is checked, all my guesses count as two guesses. I was wondering why my efficiency average was way lower than most, and my guess % was about half of the average. I gotta uncheck that box.

I also like that it keeps these stats simple.
posted by not_on_display at 9:41 PM on May 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


314 today. I need a cold beer and a sit down.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 11:40 AM on May 12, 2022


Today's (#36) was tough for me too. I solved it honestly, but it took me 354 guesses to get there after chasing down a bunch of apparently promising paths that led to deadends.
posted by TwoToneRow at 1:43 PM on May 12, 2022 [1 favorite]


Congratulations, you solved Redactle #38!
You solved it in 2 guesses
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 9:14 PM on May 14, 2022 [1 favorite]


Wow. I solved it in 119 and that's quick for me. But once I had it, I knew it before typing, even though I didn't really have anything but pronouns and modifiers to guide me. (I think my last guess was "which" and when I saw where it was placed in one sentence, it gave the rest away.)
posted by not_on_display at 10:22 PM on May 14, 2022


I'm going to be honest, the answer for #37 is a word that I'd never heard before in my life. So I'm quite proud that it only took me 120 guesses + googling the longest phrase
posted by McNulty at 12:06 AM on May 15, 2022


I’ve really enjoyed this puzzle this month. I’ll also miss this thread, when it gets closed today or tomorrow.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 9:18 AM on May 15, 2022 [1 favorite]


Same! It's been fun.

I think figuring out "cannibalism" was my biggest surprise of this puzzle (in an "ohhhh it can't be...can it?" way), but because of this thread, I usually throw in a guess for "war" early on, and I remain baffled by how it shows up (it was, like, five times for "beagle"!). And I'm still salty about whatever that sugar-related word was.
posted by mixedmetaphors at 6:57 PM on May 15, 2022 [3 favorites]


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