Redactle - THE HINTS THREAD

[BIWI]

Given how difficult it is to offer hints for redactle, without giving it away/being too obvious, this is a specific thread for hints.

Doesn't mean that they should give the game away, but it just stops other players seeing the hint every time they access the main thread.

So from now on, just keep your stats and general comments on the main thread and come here for any hints!

They've left a bit of original text in by accident, haven't they? There is one bit which, if cut and pasted into google, takes you straight there.

I just wish I'd noticed sooner 😟

Dammit!

My DS, 23, got it today. Apparently he had heard of it somewhere 🤷

Is it just me, or are there some typos in the article which don't really help?

LOOK AWAY IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE A SHORT QUOTE FROM THE FULL ARTICLE

For instance, what on earth does"If is held constant and the initial value of is varied instead" mean? I went off down a blind alley about it being about grammar or parts of speech when I saw "If is", thinking it could only be something like "If is a conjunction".

Presumably it should be x and y or a and b etc?

@Novum certain letters and numbers in the article are embedded as pictures so don't show up in the redactle article even when it unredacts.

Not a hint but some tips.

Start with the following:

1-10 numbers - it will help you get how number oriented the subject is

If there is a birth and death format in the top line do the months and numbers to 31 - you can get the dates of birth and death. A bit of time on Wiki date page means you can get an answer

I also do the following early - all four directions followed by things like "western". Common colours - black, white and red for sure.

Then depending on results I do things like - sea, university, war, science, book, animal, song to establish an area

Also countries - America, Britain, France, Germany, Russia followed by American etc. Helps get a sense of location

i normally go states, united

but dont pay any attention to me, i am a useless player if my scores are anything to go by

I do continents first.

Well...tbh I wouldn't start with those things, @ManAboutTown, I do some of thoseif I couldn't get any idea from the unredacted text and letter counting, but wouldn't slog through filling in dates. Far too lazy.

I whacked in quite a few numbers today but only because it made sense for the subject.

Some people claim to get the answer in around two guesses. It's their technique I'd like to know about.

Well today's was an absolute slog - hate it when it's something you've neeeever heard of

I think some people spend ages looking through the text first - looking for patterns, unusual words etc. I don't have the patience for that - one quick sweep and off I go!

I am the first type. I find it boring just slamming in random words and prefer to spend time deliberating and sleuthing.

I don't have much patience, unfortunately, so tend to do a lot of flailing around and chasing down rabbit-holes. I did some fairly convoluted sleuthing to get yesterday's, though, I was looking for names of ahem ahems with the right number of letters!

Psychologists could have a field-day matching personality types to the way people redactle :)

I would have to be an absolute genius or maybe a compulsive user of the reference library to do what some people seem to be able to do re spotting a pattern with the punctuation which refers to an ancient middle eastern language or some trick of the layout which clearly indicates it's to with jet engines. I can understand that we all have specialist areas but often the same posters are able to do both apparently.

I tend to look through for any "giveaways" I can actually spot (and I mean something "obvious" like very distinctive film titles not things that could be many things e.g. [blank]-[blank]-[blank]. Then make a guess at a topic and plug in a few of those type words (e.g. "he", "she", "century" and maybe some theme words). Then start trying to be clever, usually fail and start guessing wildly.

I suppose I've got a few unfair advantages in this game. I'm a chemist by training, which gives general knowledge in that field but also to some extent adjacent ones. My specific area is quite mathsy and could be called biophysics. But my job is writing scientific code. So that helps with some of the other pattern recognition skills and attention to detail, I guess. I'm used to extracting sense from gibberish. And todays bit of unredacted text... I could see vaguely the sort of thing it was about.

My other advantage is being 61 so I've had quite a while to accumulate general knowledge for the geographical and biographical topics. Someone like Yo-Yo Ma you've either heard of or haven't - I think quite a few people got him in two guesses.

I only rarely manage very low scores in pedantle though, as there's so little to go on, except letter count and the italicisation which is often useful to identify that it's an organism.

I also look for clues in Redactle in the small amount of text given and find that usually there is something that gives me a good starting point and work from there. It probably does help having a wide scientific background and many years of wider general knowledge - like @ErrolTheDragon I am also 61!

I think @ErrolTheDragon is right. I am 60 and have degrees in biochemistry and psychology. I am currently doing a combined degree and have studied art history, anthropology, history, IT and English lit. This means I have a huge breadth of knowledge to draw on as well as cultural references. It all helps.

Science and Maths are my kryptonite :) I only got Yo-Yo Ma because of the West Wing!

I totally hit Wikipedia for Yo-Yo Ma.
I have a bunch of degrees but I also have ME/CFS so my memory for words is often impaired.
I like Redactle/Pedantle because it helps me with word-finding and keeps my mind active.
I don't mind if it takes a lot of tries or a long time, I always get there in the end.
I quite like thinking of cryptic clues on here to help people too.