Spotle gives you ten guesses to name the day's mystery artist, drawn from roughly a thousand candidates. You search for a name, and each pick lights up tiles comparing it with the answer on details such as genre and nationality: green on nationality means the same country, while yellow means a different country on the right continent. Once six guesses are gone, a hint unlocks. The fun lies in closing the net, one well-chosen artist at a time.
Ranking started with games that keep Spotle's loop of guess, compare and narrow down, led by one that does it for K-pop and one for rap albums. Several more apply the loop to films, TV or football. The rest stay with musicians but change the question, asking where an artist is from, how two artists connect, or which record a stripped-down cover belongs to.
The nearest relative: a hidden K-pop group or idol, guess details compared against the answer, and partial credit when your pick shares the answer's parent label. Choosing a difficulty gives you six, eight or ten attempts, so the top setting matches Spotle's ten.
Moves the guessing to rap albums, named from a cover in six tries, yet the feedback will feel familiar: the artist tag goes green once you have the right act, and an arrow points to whether the album you named was released before or after the hidden one.
Carries the Spotle name and the ten-try comparison board over to films, where each guess turns over tiles such as release year, director and box office takings, graded exact, close or off.
The television version of the same idea: ten guesses at the mystery show, clue tiles flipping with each one, a few secret hints tucked in, plus a head-to-head mode where every round is a 60-second race.
The same ten tries and the same compare-and-narrow rhythm, applied to a hidden footballer. Nationality is checked here too, as in Spotle, along with club, league, playing position, age and market value.
Built around the nationality clue Spotle gives you: listen to five songs and pin the home of each artist on a world map, scored on how close and how quick you are.
Puts your knowledge of who has worked with whom to use: start at one artist and reach the day's target by way of real collaborations and features, in as few hops as possible.
Another artist-to-artist chain, this time linking two names through songs they appeared on together and looking for the shortest route between them, with hints if you get stuck.
Also connects one musician to another, but every step runs through related artists instead of shared songs, and the aim is to reach the target in the fewest links.
Swaps a single artist for a whole record: an album cover appears with its lettering removed, and you name the artist, the album and the year, paying a point whenever you reveal a track from it.
A Connections-style board made only of music: group sixteen tiles, such as artists' nicknames and song titles, into four sets of four, and you can slip up four times. Knowing artists well helps here too, minus the mystery act.
Starts from a song rather than a name: hear the track of the day and supply its artist, title and release year, with a leaderboard for players who sign in.
Ten. Spotle picks its mystery artist out of roughly a thousand names, and every guess is a name you search for and choose from the list. If you are still stuck once six guesses are used, a hint becomes available, which leaves four more tries to put it to work.
Green says your guess comes from the same country as the mystery artist. Yellow says the country is wrong but the continent is right, so you can rule out the rest of the world and keep your next pick nearby. MeloGuessr turns that skill into a whole game, placing artists on a map from five songs.
The Spotle site also promotes a newer music mini-game, Unshuffle, in which you put the day's song back in order. For the artist-guessing format in other fields, Spotle Movies and Spotle TV run ten-guess boards for films and shows, and KPopdle does the same for K-pop acts.
