How to Play Tradle — Full Guide

What Is Tradle?

Tradle is a daily browser game where you guess a mystery country from its export treemap — a single chart showing everything that country sells to the rest of the world, with each product sized by how much money it brings in. There are no letters and no map outline; the only clue is what the economy produces. It was built by the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC) on the same daily-guessing formula that made Wordle a habit, and it has become the go-to puzzle for anyone who likes geography with an economic twist.

How to Play, Step by Step

Read the treemap first

Start by naming the biggest tiles. Are they minerals, machinery, farm products, or textiles? The largest category is your strongest clue: a treemap ruled by crude petroleum points somewhere very different from one ruled by cars or cocoa.

Guess, then read the feedback

You get six guesses. After each one, Tradle tells you how far your country is from the answer in kilometres and shows an arrow pointing toward it. Treat that arrow like a compass — a single wrong guess still fences off half the world.

Close in with geography plus economics

Combine the two signals: the treemap tells you what kind of country it is, the arrow tells you where. Together they usually narrow six guesses down to one.

Tradle Strategy & Best First Guesses

Open with large, diversified economies that border many countries — Germany, China, the United States, Brazil, India. They rarely win outright, but the distance and direction they return map the board fast. From there, lean on signature exports: cocoa for West Africa, crude for the Gulf, coffee and soybeans for South America, machinery and cars for Western Europe and East Asia. Finally, read the top trade partner: the biggest buyer is a strong regional tell, since countries mostly sell to their neighbours and to the big economies in their orbit.

What Makes Tradle Different

Most daily games test spelling or trivia recall. Tradle tests a mental model of the world economy. That's why it pairs so well with a hint that points at a category or a region rather than a letter — and why our daily page shows the real export breakdown behind each answer, so every puzzle doubles as a quick economic-geography lesson.