Redacted Maps

About Redacted Maps

Redacted Maps shows you one map a day. It is a choropleth, the kind where each area is shaded by a value, but its title is hidden. Your job is to guess what the colours mean.

You type a guess and press Enter. Before you guess you have three reveals: tap any area of the map to peek at its hidden data. Wrong guesses buy you more clues. After one wrong guess the game shows the unit, after two the category, and after three a written hint. Your final guess is multiple choice, with four possible answers of which one is real. When you get it, the game tells you how many guesses it took, and shows how you did against other players.

The subjects are the sort of thing you see in atlases and data stories: average elevation, internet users, the dominant industry, the main energy source, the most common surname or the national sport, mapped across countries or across US states. A new puzzle comes out every day at midnight. Past maps are kept in an archive you can browse and replay.

The site describes itself as a free daily puzzle game that collects as little data as possible.

How to play Redacted Maps

1. Look at today's map: areas are coloured by a hidden statistic, and the title is redacted.
2. Use up to three reveals by tapping areas to see their hidden values.
3. Type what you think the map shows and press Enter.
4. Each wrong guess reveals more: the unit after one, the category after two, a hint after three.
5. Your final guess is multiple choice: pick the real answer out of four.

Tips

• Spend reveals on extremes, the darkest and lightest areas, to see the range of values.
• Once the unit appears, think about what is usually measured that way.
• Check the archive to get a feel for the kinds of data the maps use.

Questions