Redactle, the daily ████████-█████ ████████ puzzle

[Paul le Fou]

32 today, with some wasted guesses. I did look up his name once I got to "_____ II of Spain" and knew he was married to Mary I and had exhausted all the royal names I knew off the top of my head, though in retrospect I coulda-shoulda-woulda gotten it with a bit more wracking of brain and/or generic lists of royalty names to jog the memory.

 

[Violentvixen]

Oh shoot I never finished yesterday's puzzle. It seemed to be some sort of particle physics thing but I had to do work stuff and didn't get that far and never came back to it. What was it?

 

[Torzelbaum]

Oh shoot I never finished yesterday's puzzle. It seemed to be some sort of particle physics thing but I had to do work stuff and didn't get that far and never came back to it. What was it?

Spoiler

redshift

 

[Violentvixen]

Nice, thank you.

 

[Eishtmo]

Wow, this one is rough. Short and disambiguation. I will post a hint because woo boy. No, its not part of the answer.

Spoiler

animal

 

[Torzelbaum]

Yeah, these are always difficult. (And that hint isn't in the answer but in a way it is .)

But I managed to luck into the first half of the answer pretty early so I was able to get the final part of the answer fairly quickly (with some google searching).

29 guesses, accuracy 31.03%

Also, for everyone's future reference - disambiguation is 14 letters long.

 

[lincolnic]

I got to today's in exactly 60, though I was pretty amused by the path that led me to the answer.

"Music" at 14, "metal" at 50 led me to "metal band", which led to "glam metal band", which led to me looking at a list of glam metal bands. I thought it was gonna be White Snake!

 

[Paul le Fou]

I figured out that it was a disambiguation and didn't bother trying any more.

Got today's in 104. Took a looooong time to find some purchase, but really should have been thinking more broadly.

 

[Torzelbaum]

For the last few days I've been on a bit of a roll with doing better than the global median and average. And today was my best performance in my current streak.

​

Me: 4 guesses, accuracy 75.00%​

​

Global Median: 101.50 Guesses; 54.67% Accuracy​

​

Global Average: 122.39 Guesses; 56.21% Accuracy​

(But who knows if I'll be able to keep this up.)

 

[Violentvixen]

Today's was interesting. Once I guessed death (52) I knew exactly what was going on but it took me way too many weird sidetracks to get there. After revealing the article I don't feel so bad, I would have expected this topic to be more science focused but instead it was much more legal which is what threw me off.

 

[lincolnic]

I got to today's in 63, but like VV I spent a while thinking it was some kind of legal thing.

I got yesterday's in one go, though! I got the second word first after seeing a bunch of parentheses, and got lucky guessing the first.

 

[Paul le Fou]

78 today, but yesterday's was 152 and needed a hint (from VV's spoiler) to get me on the right track at all. I'm gettin' rusty!

 

[Torzelbaum]

I actually got today's in one (with a big assist from a google search once I had a good idea of what I was looking for).

There's really nowhere to go from here but down...

 

[lincolnic]

I got today's in 18, felt pretty good! I didn't expect to get it then, I thought I was guessing something related to the answer instead.

 

[Violentvixen]

Got it in 9 (the October 12th one I think, it's just before 8am Pacific time). Clearly a person from the birth and death date ranges that were redacted, and my first few guesses of he and France had hits. Tried Napoleon first then got the answer as I was 80% confident it was a pen name and so would only be a one word title like in the article.

 

[lincolnic]

68 today, which wasn't bad but I definitely could've gotten it in less if I'd been thinking a bit harder. I was on the right track (math/physics) almost immediately, too. Ah well.

 

[Torzelbaum]

There's really nowhere to go from here but down...

And boy did I - 96 guesses, 45.83% accuracy

 

[Violentvixen]

Well I figured out that it was Boltzmann's constant at guess 44 but had no chance in hell of getting the first part so looked it up. Feel perfectly fine with that, been a hella long time since I've studied entropy which is when I mainly learned about this.

 

[Torzelbaum]

I wasn't able to figure that out but I was able to tease out a phrase which led me to answer with a web search.

And in a weird coincidence my number of guesses (49) matched the number of hits for the second word in the title.

 

[lincolnic]

Got today's in 3! I saw "off-____" right at the start, which I thought could only be "road", and then for some reason I needed "vehicle" to confirm what I was looking for. Then "___- or _____-_______ vehicle" had to be "two- or three-wheeled vehicle", so it had to be motorcycle.

 

[Paul le Fou]

Got today's in 45, with a lot of filler guesses (I've been pretty inconsistent lately, so I haven't bothered trying too hard to avoid filler guesses or anything). Took a bit to realize I was looking for a woman instead of a man - implicit biases much? - and to land that she was Indian. I did google "famous Indian women" and immediately slapped my forehead because I should've gotten that one.

 

[Torzelbaum]

There was another redaction leak that clued me in to today's answer so I was able to get it in 14 guesses (accuracy 71.43%).

Got today's in 45, with a lot of filler guesses (I've been pretty inconsistent lately, so I haven't bothered trying too hard to avoid filler guesses or anything). Took a bit to realize I was looking for a woman instead of a man - implicit biases much? - and to land that she was Indian. I did google "famous Indian women" and immediately slapped my forehead because I should've gotten that one.

I had to look up how that name was spelled because my first instinct was to include an H and that made the name too long.

 

[lincolnic]

There was another redaction leak that clued me in to today's answer so I was able to get it it in 14 guesses (accuracy 71.43%).

Same here, 7 guesses for me.

 

[Paul le Fou]

Yesterday's (answer: Empathy) took nearly 200. Really should have honed in on the answer sooner since I was circling the right topic for a good long while, and I needed a few hints to point me in the right direction, but at least I finally got it.

Not sure about today's so far, looks like a short one and it's been a very low-hit start. Guess we'll see!
ETA: 71. The guess that got me there was Rock at guess 63, but once I uncovered that it was a sedimentary rock and exhausted what I knew, I had to go looking and yep, wouldn't have gotten that one for quiiiite a while. It being a category instead of a specific might make it easier for some but I was on the wrong path and didn't know my geology well enough. Also, asshole article moment: Stone was a 0 hit despite the answer being a type of rock.

 

[Torzelbaum]

Yesterday's took me 186 and I also was annoyed that I didn't zero in on that until later. (But I wasn't as mad as I was when I finally got census from a few days ago after 268 guesses.)

I was lucky and was able to get today's answer in 21 guesses but I did have to look it up since I also don't know that very well at all.

 

[Paul le Fou]

Yesterday's took me 186 and I also was annoyed that I didn't zero in on that later.

I understand how you feel about that article-puzzle.

 

[Violentvixen]

I got real confused on today's but finally got it on 100. I guessed French at guess 15, but then didn't think to guess France or Paris for WAY too long. After I guessed Paris I remembered I'd guessed student earlier which had a lot of hits and it fell into place from there.

 

[lincolnic]

Got another hole in one today. I saw "___-_" referred to multiple times while scrolling through the article, which in the context looked like "DSM-5" to me. "Disorder" fit for the second word, and nothing I could think of besides "mental" fit for the first. Given the length of the article, it made sense to me that it would be a more generic thing rather than an article about a specific disorder.

 

[lincolnic]

Today's puzzle was probably the quickest I've ever gone from "what the fuck am I even looking at" to "oh I'm done, that was fine". 32 guesses.

 

[Paul le Fou]

Yeah, I had a similar experience though I ended up with 49.