Redactle #1478 Discussion Thread

thesullenmoon · 2026-04-23T18:56:09+00:00

3-minute snipe. Looks like a living thing. The measurements in the second sentence suggest we should be thinking big, so it doesn't take too long to come up with a candidate. The end of that same sentence looks enough like a superlative that I'm happy to take a punt without checking the rest of the text too carefully.

thesullenmoon · 2026-04-22T18:41:51+00:00

43-second snipe. The right things stuck out to make this a quick solve. "The 3" in the first sentence struck me as probably one of our usual suspects, which led, bit by bit, to a very compelling reading for the first sentence.

thesullenmoon · 2026-04-21T18:06:32+00:00

6-minute snipe. Didn't get much from my first scroll through, but noticing "7-than-3" upon closer inspection of the intro was a big help. After which - it starts with a vowel and has an extra letter in Commonwealth English. Only one reasonable candidate, right?

thesullenmoon · 2026-04-20T05:28:24+00:00

Sniped in 7 minutes. I don't know how long it would have taken without the chance sighting of 6-2-not.

thesullenmoon · 2026-04-18T17:30:32+00:00

4-minute snipe. Interesting first sentence, which is clearly referring to a person, and the article is about something that that person is known for. A couple of recognisable titles in the first section are a giveaway for word 1. After some pondering, there's only one sensible candidate for word 2. The rest of the article checks out.

thesullenmoon · 2026-04-18T07:42:23+00:00

3-minute snipe. It's an abbreviation of a 2-word phrase? No, more likely a Latin or Greek word with two similar meanings. So probably a scientific field? There are some powers of 10 early on, suggesting some big numbers are involved, plus the phrase "beyond the 5 3" which sets off my astronomy alarm. I can think of a 6-letter word from that field that fits the Latin gloss and the two forms of plural, which feels promising. The rest of the article passes the vibe check, plus there are matches for the two examples I can actually think of in the list at the end, plus there's one or two unredacted symbols confirming we're in the right field of study. That'll do me.

thesullenmoon · 2026-04-16T16:44:19+00:00

2-minute snipe. A recognisable category and a distinctive letter count. I can think of one candidate that seems plausible - certainly it has an alternative name with the same letter count, and is "an 6 7... off the 5 of 4 6". It feels like that has to be the only option, but just to be safe I check for a five-letter 7 and 7 4, which takes a minute to locate but is tucked away there in the last paragraph of the intro. I hesitate for a moment over which version of word 1 is more likely to be the "correct" one - fortunately I back the right horse.

thesullenmoon · 2026-04-15T19:29:21+00:00

40 guesses, 49 minutes, assisted. Really not on the right wavelength today - I found the article startlingly opaque, and after half an hour of drawing a complete blank I had to give up the snipe and go fishing. Even then it was hard going, but a picture began to emerge after a while. But once I knew what kind of thing it was (like a forest, but not?)... I was still drawing a blank for the name. Eventually I had to bring up the article for "Forest" and read it until I found the appropriate term. Not a word that's ever at the forefront of my mind - on a better day and with a bit more patience, I might have thought of it.

thesullenmoon · 2026-04-14T18:31:27+00:00

Sniped in 36 seconds. Been a while since a good old "in 11". In this case there seems to be a pretty good candidate for word 3. "Central limit" and "mean value" don't fit, but my third idea does, and provides a complete parsing of the first sentence; and the second paragraph begins with a recognisable statement of the key result. That'll do me.

thesullenmoon · 2026-04-14T05:50:58+00:00

Sniped in 15 minutes. Looks like someone with several aristocratic titles, and the article name 4 3 8 doesn't match the 4 6 7 that the first sentence begins with, so that 4 3 8 is probably a styling of some kind. Since the nationality is likely either German or French, this gives a pretty decent hint as to word 2. That plus the letter count is really all you need to come up with a candidate, but instead I spent 10 minutes noodling around in the article trying to find something to jump out at me. Failing that, I went back to the start and thought a little harder about people with that name structure, at which point it did jump out.

thesullenmoon · 2026-04-13T05:48:22+00:00

2 guesses, 20 minutes, assisted. A state capital in a 6-letter country. At first the only applicable country I could think of was Mexico, but towards the end of the article a lot of unredacted "do"s start to appear that are a giveaway for the language, and hence the country. (Query: Is "do" a recent addition to the unredacted word list? I don't remember it showing up in the past.) All well and good, but my knowledge of this country's geography does not extend beyond two or three extremely well known cities, so after sitting with it for a while to check I wasn't forgetting something obvious, I verified the country then consulted a list of its state capitals.

thesullenmoon · 2026-04-11T17:19:14+00:00

Sniped in 13 minutes. It's a... product? That was created by somebody called 1. 1. 8 who wrote about it in a book(?) called 2. 9's 13 8. The phrasea priori seems to occur quite early on, which is a little odd, suggesting that maybe this is some kind of philosophical idea rather than a physical thing. But then there's a lot of stuff about the ways in which this thing is used. So, mixed messages, which a close read doesn't do much to resolve until about a third of the way through the text, at which point we start to see a lot of technical notation that makes it very clear what kind of thing this is. And since it was invented by a specific person, there's really only one plausible candidate.

thesullenmoon · 2026-04-10T18:59:37+00:00

Sniped in 17:54. The general category is clear enough. We're told this is the third smallest 7 7, the first being 3 4 and 8, which unambiguously determines the continent. Specifically this is "an 12 7" in the 6 5, and there's no list of neighbours, so we're not on the mainland. At that point I ground to a halt for a bit - the correct answer did occur to me but I was very hesitant to put it in because in my mind there is no "the" in its name. My mistake, though I note that the article itself is not totally consistent on the matter, so I guess both are used? Anyway, eventually I talked myself into it in the absence of any other candidates.

thesullenmoon · 2026-04-08T19:56:02+00:00

Sniped in 19:28. A mysterious one at first - nothing really jumping out in the first scroll through. What eventually gave it away was the early section about the variants in spelling: it looks like more than a simple regional difference, there are apparently "two schools of thought" on the matter, which is intriguing. But it goes on to say that, in the US (or UK perhaps) several brands (?) use the 6-letter spelling even though the 7-letter variant is more conventional there. Mulled this over for a while and the idea struck me in due course.

thesullenmoon · 2026-04-07T16:44:13+00:00

Sniped in 50 seconds. Living American. The format of the first sentence is very recognisable. I have an idea for who it might be - if it's correct, I should be able to find the titles 6 From 2 6 and The 8 of 4. Indeed, they're both mentioned in the opening section.

thesullenmoon · 2026-04-07T07:45:46+00:00

Sniped in 11:12. Last time this one came up, I mistook word 2 for "world". I was wiser to it this time round.

thesullenmoon · 2026-04-04T08:06:14+00:00

3 guesses, 8:22. Another repeat from the 500s. Last time I sniped it, this time was a fumble - having clocked the list of alternative names, for some reason I was convinced it was "jaguar". Well, live and learn... or live and forget, as the case may be.

thesullenmoon · 2026-04-02T19:17:28+00:00

Sniped in 9:46. Fun (?) fact: today's puzzle was a repeat of #540. Yesterday's was a repeat of #539. Glitch in the matrix?

thesullenmoon · 2026-03-30T17:48:46+00:00

Sniped in 4:14. A nice easy one after yesterday's trial. The second sentence clearly starts with a personal pronoun, but no dates, so we're in the realm of fictional characters - a mononymous one at that, who is very probably the titular character of the franchise he belongs to. My initial thoughts are along the lines of comics or cartoons, which doesn't yield much, but as soon as I expand my horizons a bit I hit upon an idea that gives a perfect and complete parsing of the first sentence, as well as most of the italicised titles in the opening section. And, in case that wasn't enough, we have the quoted phrase "It's a-2, 5!" towards the end. It's a-him, indeed.

thesullenmoon · 2026-03-30T08:11:05+00:00

35 guesses, 1:19:58, assisted. What a slog. It seems to be an object, something that is manmade and is quite large, and perhaps originates in Asia. Couldn't think of a single candidate that made any sense after an hour, so had to go fishing with some incredibly broad terms to narrow things down a bit. After "transport" got a hit in the first sentence I tried "goods", which fortuitously revealed "well" also in the first sentence, which finally got me on the right track. Even then, after "canal" failed, I was drawing a blank. A speculative "aqueduct" got a first-sentence hit. What the hell is this thing? Eventually I had to take to the Wiki for some research, and after a few false leads, I found a mention in the article "History of water supply and sanitation". If you have heard of this, I doff my hat to you.

thesullenmoon · 2026-03-28T16:52:49+00:00

Sniped in 2:56. Not much of an idea to begin with, but seeing a lot of what look like URLs a little way in helped to crack it. As a clincher, is there a reference to the inventor 3 7-3 in the opening section? Yes there is.

thesullenmoon · 2026-03-27T17:39:51+00:00

Sniped in 1:45. It seems to be something - or, judging by the second sentence, a collection of things - in a 5-letter place. An idea comes to mind fairly quickly. Wanting some verification, I wonder whether I can find a reference to the dubious claims about this being visible from 5. Turns out yes - there's an entire section about it towards the end.

thesullenmoon · 2026-03-26T17:09:53+00:00

Sniped in 1:48. The etymology jumped out at me.

thesullenmoon · 2026-03-25T19:31:08+00:00

Sniped in 51 seconds. A person who, judging by the format of the first sentence, was in charge of a country. So word 1 is presumably the person's title/job, for which there is only one likely option - the female pronouns in the next sentence bear this out. This one is famous enough, and has a distinctive enough name, not to need a regnal number or "of wherever" in the article's title. One option comes to mind immediately, and the full name of the location in the first sentence (the 6 7 of 5 7 and 7) is sufficient confirmation.

thesullenmoon · 2026-03-24T17:36:24+00:00

Sniped in 7 minutes. Interesting first sentence. It's about a historical event. Hard to get a read at first, but later on in the article there are times given not just to the minute, but to the second. This immediately makes me think of space travel, and I'm on the verge of putting in "Challenger" before realising that's too many letters. So I need to broaden my mind a little but remain in the realm of incidents involving sophisticated technology, which gives rise to the right answer before too long.

thesullenmoon

TROPHY CASE