Field guide
Tradle Export Treemaps: What to Look For First
Tradle replaces the country outline with a chart. Each day you see a treemap of one country's exports, and you have six guesses to identify the country. Every rectangle in the treemap is a product, and its size is proportional to that product's share of the country's exports. Reading that chart is the whole skill of the game. This guide explains how the treemap is built, how guesses are checked, and how to move from a product mix to a country.
What the daily treemap shows
The game's how-to-play panel describes the daily chart as a treemap of the exports for a particular country. Each rectangle represents a product, and the rectangle's area is proportional to that product's percentage of the country's exports. A country that exports mostly one commodity shows one dominant block; a country with a diversified export base shows many smaller blocks across several product families.
The data comes from the Observatory of Economic Complexity, the trade-data site that publishes Tradle. The game's credits name Alexander Simoes as its maker and link to the OEC for more trade data. A new country is available every day.
How the six guesses are checked
Six guesses are allowed. Each guess must be a valid country or territory name. After every guess the game returns three values: the distance between your guess and the target country, the direction of the target from your guess, and a proximity percentage.
The distance is calculated between the centres of the selected and target territories, not between their closest borders. The game's own example makes the difference clear: the computed distance between the United States and Canada is around 2,260 km even though the two countries share a long border. That is why a correct neighbouring country still shows a large distance number.
Reading distance, direction and proximity
The feedback works like a search radius plus a bearing. Distance tells you which ring around your guess the target sits on. Direction tells you which way to move along that ring. Proximity summarises how close the guess is overall, so it usually falls when the distance falls.
The game's how-to panel gives worked examples. A guess of Chile was 13,557 km away, in the north-east direction, with a proximity of 32%. A later guess of Finland was 3,206 km away, south-east, with 84% proximity. A correct guess returns a distance of zero. Reading the three values together is more useful than reading any one alone: a short distance with the wrong direction still leaves a large search area.
Working from product mix to country
Start with the largest rectangles, because they describe the export category the country depends on most. Then look at the second and third groups: a chart with a single dominant block and almost nothing else points to a commodity exporter, while a chart with machinery, chemicals, metals and agricultural products spread across the map points to a larger, more diversified economy.
Two further checks narrow the field. First, the presence of a specific product family that few countries export in volume is a stronger signal than a generic one shared by dozens of countries. Second, the absence of expected blocks matters: a country that imports most of its fuel or food shows a different chart from a producer. The OEC site linked from the game presents the same export data with country-level detail, so a treemap pattern can be checked against the underlying trade figures.
Common mistakes
The first mistake is guessing a country because its name fits the region suggested by the direction arrow while ignoring the product mix. Distance and direction narrow geography; the treemap is what identifies the economy. The second is forgetting that the distance uses territory centres, so neighbouring countries can look far apart and distant countries can look closer than expected. The third is spending all six guesses in one continent: two guesses in different regions produce two bearings, and the intersection of two bearings is usually more informative than a fourth guess near the first.
Because the chart is the only clue, write down the two or three largest product groups before guessing. If the first guess is rated far away, the product mix is still valid information; changing the region should not change the reading of the chart.
Play the official game: Play today's treemap at the OEC Tradle page. The game is free, needs no account, and runs in desktop and mobile browsers; the same page shows a new country every day. A Tradle game card on this site summarises the rules.
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Games mentioned in this guide
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