Frequently asked questions

What is Musicianle?

A daily music guessing game. Each day one musician or band is hidden behind their own discography: you see their releases with the year and genre, but the titles are masked. You have to work out who it is.

Can the answer be a band?

Yes, and often. About a third of answers are bands rather than solo performers. We say musician as shorthand throughout, but for a band you are looking at the group's own discography.

When does the puzzle change?

At midnight UTC. Everybody in the world plays the same board on the same day, which is what makes comparing results meaningful.

Is there a guess limit?

Yes, eight. After that the board closes and the answer is not shown. It turns up in the archive the next day. There is no timer.

Does a wrong guess do anything?

Yes, always, and in more ways than the letters. Every guess is compared against the hidden musician on four things: solo or band, country, any genre they share, and whether the answer debuted earlier or later. You do not need to name anyone connected to the answer for that to work, which means any musician you can think of is a useful move.

Every wrong guess uncovers one more letter across the whole board and tells you whether the hidden musician debuted earlier or later than the one you named. If the musician you guessed happens to be credited on one of the releases, that title is revealed in full.

Do I need an account?

No. The game runs without signing in, and your progress is kept in your own browser.

Is there any audio?

None. Musicianle is played entirely on discography metadata: titles, years, release types, and genres. Nothing is streamed and nothing is played.

Where does the music data come from?

Releases, credits and dates come from MusicBrainz, an open music encyclopedia whose core data is released under CC0. Genres come from Wikidata, which is also CC0. Musician popularity is derived from Wikipedia readership, which is how we judge whether a musician is well enough known to be a fair answer.

How is difficulty decided?

Each puzzle is scored before it is scheduled, using how widely read the musician is, how many releases the board shows, and how long the career runs. A long career by a well known musician is an easy board. A short run by somebody obscure would be unfair, so it is never scheduled at all.

Why was a particular musician never a puzzle?

Most likely they did not clear the filters. A musician needs at least six studio releases, a career spanning several years, and enough of a following that a reasonable player could plausibly know them. Classical performers are excluded too, since their catalogues are mostly recordings of other people's compositions.

Why is an album missing from the board?

Self-titled albums are held back. A masked self-titled record spells out the letter and word pattern of the musician's own name, which would hand over the answer, so those rows are left off the board. Everything else in the release history is there.

Can I play old puzzles?

Past boards and their answers are in the archive. Today's answer is never published there, for obvious reasons.

Is it free?

Yes.