Spotle

Spotle takes the Wordle idea and applies it to musicians. Instead of letters, each guess is an artist picked from a pool of about a thousand popular acts, and the game shows how that artist lines up against the hidden one. The site is run by Flatwhite Studios.

Each guess fills a row of six tiles: the year of the artist's debut album, how many members the act has, their rank by listeners, gender, genre and country. A green tile is a match. A yellow tile means you are close, for example a debut a few years off, a popularity rank not far away, or a country on the same continent. Arrows on the numbers tell you whether to aim earlier or later, higher or lower.

You never hear a song while you play, so it is a game of deduction more than ear training. A good opening guess splits the field by genre and era, and from there you narrow it down. Puzzles are numbered and everyone gets the same artist each day. After the sixth guess you can take one free hint from a choice of three, such as a collaborator or the artist's Grammy record, and it costs no guess. A missed day can be played from the archive, which keeps the last 50 puzzles. The menu also holds fan-vote brackets, a timed mode called Spotle Jam, a Create mode for setting a friend a puzzle, and Unshuffle, a music jigsaw. Around Halloween the board takes on cobwebs and a spider, and some artist pictures switch to costume shots.

Spotle suits people who follow charts and know when their favourite acts broke through. It is quick to play, and because the pool spans decades, older listeners and younger ones each get days that favour them.