2024exports
Shares of classified exports, 2024
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Tradle Unlimited
Play Tradle Unlimited: name the country from a treemap of what it sells abroad. 6 guesses (8 on Easy), and each one tells you how far off you are and which way to go.
How to play Tradle
- 1
The treemap shows one country’s exports for one year. Each block is a product group, sized by its share.
- 2
Type a country or territory and pick it from the list. Each guess lands on the distance ladder with its kilometres and a closeness score.
- 3
The dial points from your guess toward the answer. Follow it.
- 4
Name it within 6 guesses (8 on Easy). If you run out of guesses, the answer appears on the board.
Tradle tips
- Look at what kind of goods fill the board before you look at the names. Oil and gas point to the Gulf, West Africa or Russia, cocoa and gold to West Africa, copper to Chile or Peru, cars and machinery to Europe or East Asia.
- Use the first guess to find the region, not to win. Pick a country in the middle of where you think it is: the direction and the distance then cut the map down faster than a long shot does, and the closeness score tells you how close the neighbourhood is.
- Read the dial and the ladder together. Two guesses on opposite sides of the answer pin it between them, and a short distance in a new direction means you are circling it. Distances are measured between country centres, so the largest countries can look far away from a neighbour.
- Take a hint when two or three countries still fit. The first one gives the continent, then the first letter and the number of letters, and none of them costs a guess. On Easy the board already shows the continent, so you start with the letter.
Tradle Unlimited questions
How do I play Tradle Unlimited?
You see a treemap of what one country sold abroad in one year: the 12 biggest product groups, plus one block for everything else, each sized by its share. Type a country or territory, pick it from the list and press Guess. Every guess is placed on a distance ladder and added to a dial that points toward the answer, so you can narrow it down. Guess it and the game is won; run out of guesses and the answer is shown on the board. Press Next puzzle for a new country, as often as you like.
How many guesses do I get, and what do Easy, Medium and Hard change?
Easy gives 8 guesses and picks from the 60 biggest exporters, and it prints the continent above the board. Medium gives 6 guesses and picks from the 120 biggest. Hard gives 6 guesses and picks from all 185 countries and territories in the game. On every level you may guess any of them. Hint costs no guess: it gives the continent (Medium and Hard), then the first letter, then the number of letters.
What do the distance, direction and percentage mean after each guess?
Distance is the straight-line distance over the Earth between a point in the middle of your guess and a point in the middle of the answer, rounded to 10 km, with miles in brackets. Direction is the way to head from your guess toward the answer, as one of eight compass points. The percentage is how close you are: 100% is the answer itself, and it falls in a straight line to 0% at 20,037 km, the farthest two places on the planet can be.
Why does a neighbouring country show as thousands of kilometres away?
Distance is measured between the middle points of two countries, not between their borders. Big countries have middles far from their edges, so neighbours can be a long way apart: the United States and Canada share a border thousands of kilometres long, yet their middle points are about 2,330 km (1,450 mi) apart, and China to Russia is about 5,350 km (3,320 mi). Use the direction as much as the number.
How do I read the treemap of exports?
Each block is a product group from the customs code known as the Harmonized System, and its area is that group’s share of the country’s exports. There are 12 blocks for the biggest groups and a striped block, Other, for everything else, which sits in the bottom-right corner. Colours follow the 21 sections of that code, so blocks of the same colour are related goods. The shares are out of exports that could be classified, as the line under the treemap says. Small blocks show only a percentage; hover or tap one to see its full name.
Is there an unlimited version of Tradle, or only one country a day?
Yes. Press Next puzzle for another country at the same level, with no sign-up and no daily limit. Easy draws from 60 countries, Medium from 120 and Hard from 185, and the ones you played most recently are skipped. Switch to Daily if you would rather have the one country everybody gets today at each level.
Is this the original Tradle from the Observatory of Economic Complexity?
No. The Dles is an independent site. We wrote this version ourselves, with our own look, our own levels and a new country every time you press Next, and it is not affiliated with or endorsed by the original game’s makers.
Who made the original Tradle and when did it come out?
According to Automaton and the project’s page on GitHub, the original was made by Alexander Simoes of the Observatory of Economic Complexity and came out in 2022. It is a different game from this one, which was written separately for this site.
How many guesses does the original daily Tradle give you?
Six, according to a teaching write-up from the Economics Network and the game’s own page, and it sets one country a day. This version gives 6 guesses on Medium and Hard and 8 on Easy, and you can keep playing after you finish.
Where does the export data in this game come from?
The data comes from the Growth Lab at Harvard’s Atlas of Economic Complexity, which publishes it as free-to-use CC0 data and builds it from United Nations trade reports (UN Comtrade). Products are grouped by the 4-digit Harmonized System, the code customs offices use. Each country is shown for its latest full year, 2024 for 174 countries and 2023 for 11 whose 2024 figures are incomplete, and the middle points come from Natural Earth map data, which is in the public domain. The short product names are our own.