Statle

Statle gives you a city or town name and asks you to figure out which U.S. state it belongs to. After each guess you get another city or town from that same state as a fresh clue, so the puzzle narrows itself down as you go. A companion mode, Statle EU, swaps in European countries and cities for players who want the same idea on a bigger map.

What is Statle?

Statle is a daily geography game built around a simple hook: instead of typing letters into a grid, you are trying to place a city on the map of the United States. Each day everyone sees the same starting city name, and after each guess the game reveals another city or town from the correct state. The hints get progressively easier because they are ordered by town population, so early clues tend to be obscure places and later ones are cities you are more likely to know. If a state you guess borders the actual answer, the site highlights it yellow, which gives you a spatial clue on top of the city names themselves. Because the puzzle is shared across all players for the day, it works the same way Wordle does: everyone is solving the identical thing, and you can compare notes with friends without anyone having an advantage from a different starting point.

What separates Statle from the crowd of state-guessing games is the hint mechanic itself. A lot of daily geography games lean on shape or distance as the clue, including a similarly named game called Statele, made separately by Teuteuf, which shows a state's silhouette and tells you distance and direction from each guess. Statle instead leans on place names and geographic literacy: you are reasoning from a real city or town you may or may not recognize to the state it sits in, which rewards a different kind of knowledge than shape memorization. One catch the site itself points out is that multiple states can share identical town names, so a familiar-sounding clue can still mislead you.

Statle was created by Sam Bender and Mason Holaska in 2022, part of the wave of Wordle-inspired daily puzzles that followed Josh Wardle's original game, and the site credits Wardle directly as the inspiration. The creator's personal site, sambender.net, is linked from the page, but there is no visible Discord, Twitter, or feedback form built into Statle itself, so it reads as a small personal project rather than a game backed by a studio or a community hub.

The overall presentation is clean and functional: a single puzzle per day, ad slots around the edges but no paywall, and a bonus mode in Statle EU that applies the same city-to-country guessing loop to Europe, with the same population-ordered hints and yellow highlights for bordering countries. Vatican City is left out of the EU version because it has no cities within it.

How to play Statle

1. Open Statle at statle.us.
2. Read the city or town name shown for the day's puzzle.
3. Type or select your best guess for which U.S. state that city is in.
4. After each guess, note the newly revealed city from the answer state, and check whether your guessed state was highlighted yellow for bordering the answer.
5. Keep guessing states and using each new city hint until you land on the correct one.
6. Try Statle EU at statle.us/europe.html for the same format guessing European countries instead of states.

Tips and strategy

• Use the first city name to narrow down a region of the country before locking in a guess, rather than guessing blind on the first try.
• Pay attention to a yellow highlight on a wrong guess. It means your guess borders the real answer, so look at that state's neighbors next.
• Early clues are the smallest towns and later clues are bigger cities, since hints are ordered by population. If the first name means nothing to you, a guess in the right region still earns useful border feedback.
• Remember that different states can share the same town name, so do not lock in on the first state you associate with a clue.
• Keep a mental map of state borders handy since the bordering-state highlight only helps if you know which states touch which.
• Do not confuse Statle with the similarly named Statele. Statle hints with city names and border highlights, while Statele hints with a state's shape plus distance and direction.
• If U.S. states feel too familiar, switch to Statle EU for a version that uses European countries and cities instead.

Good to know

Category

Geography

Resets

Daily (exact reset time not published)

Cost

Free to play, with ad placements

Guesses

No stated limit; new same-state city hints continue until solved

Hints

Cities revealed in order of population, so hints get easier

Modes

USA mode (default) and Statle EU for European countries

Archive

No past-puzzle archive found

Creator

Sam Bender and Mason Holaska

Launched

2022

Statle FAQ

Is Statle free to play?

Yes. Statle is free with ad placements on the page and no paywall or subscription.

How do you play Statle?

You are shown a city or town name and guess which U.S. state it is in. After each guess the game reveals another city from the answer state as a new hint, and guessed states that border the correct one are highlighted yellow.

When does Statle reset?

Statle changes once a day and is the same puzzle for everyone, though the site does not publish the exact reset time or time zone.

Is Statle the same as Statele?

No. Statle (statle.us) hints with city names and bordering-state highlights and was made by Sam Bender and Mason Holaska. Statele is a different, similarly named game by Teuteuf that hints with a state's shape plus distance and direction.

Who made Statle?

Statle was created by Sam Bender and Mason Holaska in 2022, crediting Josh Wardle's Wordle as the inspiration.