How to Play Tradle: Rules, Clues, and a Real Example Round

To play Tradle, look at a country's export treemap and guess which country it is within six tries. After each guess you get the distance, a direction arrow, and a proximity percentage that guide your next move.

01The Rules at a Glance

• One mystery country per round, shown only as its export treemap.
• Six guesses. Each must be a real country or territory.
• Every guess returns three clues: distance, direction, and proximity.
• Reach the country (100% proximity) and you win; miss six times and the answer is revealed.
• Duplicate guesses are rejected, so every try carries information.

That's the whole rulebook. The skill is in reading the chart — a treemap is a country's economic fingerprint, and no two are alike.

Reading the treemap before you guess

Spend your first ten seconds on the two or three biggest blocks. A chart led by crude oil narrows the world to a couple dozen exporters; one led by integrated circuits narrows it to a handful.

Then look at variety. Dozens of medium blocks with no dominant product suggests a large, diversified economy like Germany or the United States. Three giant blocks and little else points to a smaller or single-resource exporter.

Finally, check the labels on mid-sized blocks. Products like coffee, cocoa beans, copper ore, or diamonds carry far more geographic information than generic categories like machinery.

02Understanding Your Three Clues

Distance

The distance between your guess and the answer, measured between country centers. Tap it to switch between kilometers and miles.

Because it's center-to-center, neighboring giants can still show a big number — Russia's center sits thousands of kilometers from its European borders. Treat distance as a radius, not a verdict.

The Direction Arrow

The arrow points from your guess toward the answer, rounded to eight compass directions. Guess Brazil and see ↙️? Head southwest — think Argentina or Chile.

The rounding matters: a "north" arrow covers everything within 22.5° of due north. Combine two arrows from two different guesses and the overlap usually pins the region exactly.

Proximity Percent

Proximity converts distance into a 0–100% score, using half of Earth's circumference (20,000 km) as the zero point. The math gives you a handy rule of thumb:

03A Real Example Round

Here's an actual round, solved in four guesses. The treemap showed one huge teal block — copper ore, 29% of exports — plus refined copper, fruit, and fish. Copper that dominant screams the Andes.

Notice the pattern: guess one buys information, guesses two and three triangulate, guess four names the country. That rhythm wins most rounds.

Also notice what didn't happen: no guess was wasted on a hunch. Peru was a reasonable copper answer, but the round was already won on process — arrow plus distance eliminated everything else before the final guess.

One more habit worth copying: after every round, win or lose, glance at the answer's treemap for five seconds. That's how "copper equals Chile" becomes reflex instead of trivia.

04Daily Puzzle or Unlimited Practice?

The official Tradle serves one worldwide puzzle per day. Our Tradle Unlimited adds an endless practice mode — same six guesses, same clues, same real trade data — plus a Daily tab that follows the official schedule.

New players improve fastest by running five to ten unlimited rounds before touching the daily. Your streak will thank you.

Scoring, streaks, and the emoji grid

There's no point score in Tradle — your result is simply how many guesses you needed, from 1/6 to 6/6, or X/6 for a miss. Streaks count consecutive wins, and your guess distribution shows where you typically close rounds out.

After each round you can copy a spoiler-free emoji grid: one row of five squares per guess, where 🟩 marks each 20% of proximity and 🟨 a partial 10%. It tells the story of your round without revealing the answer — which is exactly why these grids took over social feeds.

05Common Beginner Mistakes

• Guessing tiny neighbors first. Open with large, central countries; save microstates for the endgame. Luxembourg as an opener wastes the guess even when you're right about the region.
• Ignoring the percentage. The arrow alone can mislead across oceans — an ⬅️ from Portugal could mean the Azores or the Caribbean. Always scale your jump by the distance.
• Reading color, not size. Categories share colors across countries, so a yellow-heavy chart isn't a country — the share of each block is the real clue.
• Burning guesses on hunches. With six tries, one calibration guess is cheap insurance — going all-in on guess one is not. Even experts anchor first.

For deeper strategy — signature exports by region, opener patterns, and economy-size reads — see the strategy section on the game page.

06Frequently Asked Questions