Redactle is large while Wordle is small. In contrast to Wordle, which asks you to decipher a single five-letter word, Redactle Unlimited presents you with a completely blacked-out Wikipedia page, not even a fragment. You have an unlimited number of attempts and must predict one word at a time. You even get a lot of gifts to begin with, such as "was," "and," and "for." So what's the problem?

The purpose of the article is to identify the specific person, object, or location it is about. In Wordle, knowing a few common letters is usually sufficient to get you the majority of the way there; if I get responses on letters like E, T, and R, I don't have to do much else. But does knowing that "he" appears 159 times in Redactle really help? Maybe. Kind of.

How Redactle is played

I'll guide you through a game I played yesterday (no spoilers for today). The page was lengthy, which makes sense given that it was derived from one of the 10,000 essential articles on Wikipedia; therefore, it is unlikely to be a fragment or something esoteric.

The structure of a Wikipedia article was clear, with headings in large type, though the majority of the words in the headings were obscured. The abundance of "The ___ of ____" and "Regarding the ____" in the bulleted list suggested that this article might be about a prolific author. And because the page is formatted with a monospace font, you can make educated estimates about the lengths of words even if you do not know what the words are.

But does it involve a person? There is no capacity in the title for a first and last name. The first few syllables had a hyphen between them, which reminded me of French names with hyphens.

I began with "birth" and received three hits. So perhaps a person. On an impulse, I searched for "France" and received 19 results. "Book" yielded twenty results, whereas "author" yielded only three, with none in the first sentence indicating what an individual is best known for. I found myself seeking a balance between specific, uncommon words (which would disclose more information) and common words that frequently appear in biographies (which would be more likely to be hits). There were several results for "king," so I thought of the American/British/French revolution. Not many for "England" or "America," either. I chose "woman" because I anticipated that a well-known female would be characterized as the "first woman to do such-and-such." A single strike. So I attempted "he" and received 159 results, including several in the introduction. Okay, it's a man. There are no results for "playwright", "Spain", "medicine", "1700", or "1800". Ultimately, I chose to emphasize France by guessing "French" (34 strikes), "revolution" (2 hits), and "enlightenment" (8 hits). There was illumination in the very first sentence.

There are only a limited number of Enlightenment figures renowned enough to be featured in the top Wikipedia articles. Let's attempt a renowned person; perhaps a miss will reveal a collaborator or inspiration. Voltaire? Yep. The entire article was disclosed. I figured it out after 46 attempts 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 conundrum every day, with some days being more challenging than others. On a Reddit thread about the game, some users remark the requirement of 250 attempts to solve a difficult entry.

When will a new Redactle be released?

Daily puzzles are released at 11 a.m. CDT, which is 12 p.m. Eastern Time.

What is the optimal Redactle strategy?

So far, I am learning as I go. "enlightenment" and "revolution" would have been excellent follow-ups to "France" rather than "hail-mary" plays late in the game.

In addition, I'm going to start paying more attention to the headings and first paragraphs of Wikipedia articles. For example, Voltaire was referred to as a "writer" rather than a "author."