Redactle

What is Redactle?

Redactle is a daily puzzle game where players try to guess the title of a heavily redacted Wikipedia article.

At the start of the game, players only basic parts of speech (like articles, conjunctions, prepositions – so words like "and" "the" "which" and "as") are unredacted. Players can reveal words by correctly guessing them.

The puzzle is solved when the player correctly guesses the Wikipedia article title.

Thoughts on gameplay

Redactle is hard, which makes it really fun, especially in groups. It works a lot of parts of your brain: you're relying on logic and context clues, and tapping your vocabulary, but "vibes" can be valuable input, too.

First time players can get pretty far by throwing out lots of guesses, especially basic words like "people," "first," "history," "best," and others that are commonly found in Wikipedia articles. Once the article is fleshed out with lots of words, it's relatively easy to place its topic area.

But the game is best played, in this author's humble opinion, when treated like golf. In other words, you should try to solve the puzzle with the fewest number of guesses.

Why it's good

Redactle shares a lot of the same charm as Semantle; it's challenging, with an initially very open-ended gameplay experience that finishes with targeted, thoughtfully calibrated guesses.

It does have a multiplayer mode, which I appreciate, but can also be played solo. Redactle works great over screenshare, too, with one player polling their teammates and submitting the best guesses.

The game has lovely design, with lots of thoughtful little features: click on redactled words to reveal word lengths, click on revealed words (in the sidebar) to cycle through their appearances, hints, stats, and so on. Overall, a great game – but also a lovely piece of art, if you ask me.

John