r/edact

What it does

r/edact is a daily puzzle game where players try to guess which subreddit a Reddit post came from. Each day, a new post appears with its subreddit name hidden (redacted). Players have 5 guesses to identify the correct subreddit.

With each wrong guess, a new clue is revealed:

1st wrong guess → Upvote ratio
2nd wrong guess → Top comment from the post
3rd wrong guess → Community stats (subscribers, age)
4th wrong guess → A sidebar rule from the subreddit

Score 5 points for guessing on your first try, down to 1 point on your fifth guess. Share your results with a Wordle-style emoji grid and compete on the daily leaderboard.

Features include autocomplete search across 700+ popular subreddits, streak tracking, persistent stats, and sharable results.

How we built it

Built entirely on Reddit's Devvit platform using TypeScript. The frontend uses vanilla HTML/CSS/JS for a fast, lightweight experience. The backend runs on Express with Devvit's Redis for persistent storage of game state, user stats, and leaderboards.

Puzzles are generated daily using a Python script that fetches interesting Reddit posts, redacts identifying information, and collects clue data. These puzzles are stored in GitHub and fetched fresh each day.

Tech stack:

Devvit Web (Reddit Developer Platform)
TypeScript (client + server)
Express for API routing
Redis for persistence
Vite for builds
Python for puzzle generation

Challenges we ran into

Designing a fair clue system was tricky - clues needed to be helpful without making the answer too obvious. We iterated on which metadata to reveal and in what order.

Ensuring puzzles don't contain text that gives away the subreddit (like mentions of the community name in post titles) required careful content filtering.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The leaderboard adds daily competition without being overwhelming. Most importantly, it feels native to Reddit - testing your subreddit knowledge is something only Reddit can offer.

What we learned

Building on Devvit taught us how to work within Reddit's developer ecosystem. We learned to leverage Redis effectively for game state, user stats, and leaderboards.

We also learned a lot about game design - balancing difficulty while making clues satisfying.