How to play the Padel Guess classic challenge in fewer guesses

The classic challenge is the original Padel Guess mode: every day there is a hidden player from the top 100 of the men’s FIP ranking, or from the top 50 of the women’s, and you name players until you find them. Each guess gives you back a row of tiles comparing your player with the hidden one, attribute by attribute. There is no cap on guesses, so every game ends in a solve; what changes is how many it takes.

If you have just found the game, this is how to read the board without tripping over the arrows. If you already play, the second half is about strategy: who to open with, how to cross the clues and which mistakes stretch a game out.

What the classic challenge is

Every day, at the same time for everyone, one player is drawn from the top 100 of the men’s FIP ranking and one from the top 50 of the women’s. They are two independent challenges, each with its own page: men’s and women’s.

To play, type a name into the search box. The dropdown offers up to eight matches from the top, ignores accents (typing “lebron” finds Lebrón) and lists players whose name starts with what you typed first. Pick one and the guess appears on the board, newest at the top. Just above the search box, the line “Yesterday was …” reminds you who the hidden player was the day before. It is not them today.

How to read the board

Each guess is a card with the player’s name and, below it, one tile per attribute. In the men’s challenge there are six: Side, Hand, Country, Age, Height and Ranking. The women’s challenge has no Hand tile, because that data does not exist for any of the players. Each tile settles on a colour:

• Green: the value matches the hidden player’s.
• Red: it does not match. On Age, Height and Ranking it comes with an arrow.
• Grey with “No data”: the information is missing for one of the two players. It is neither a hit nor a miss; ignore it as a clue.

Attribute	What it shows	Green	Red
Side	Forehand or Backhand	Same side	The other side
Hand	Left- or Right-handed (men only)	Same hand	The other hand
Country	Flag and country code	Same country	A different country
Age	Years	Same age	↑ older; ↓ younger
Height	Centimetres	Same height	↑ taller; ↓ shorter
Ranking	Position, such as #12	Same position	↑ ranked better; ↓ worse

The arrow always points to where the hidden player sits relative to yours: ↑ on Age means they are older than your guess, and ↑ on Height, that they are taller. On Ranking it is the other way round: #1 is the best, so ↑ means a lower number. It is the most common mix-up in the game and the one that costs the most guesses.

Two more details. There is no “close”: Age is compared year by year and Height centimetre by centimetre, with no in-between colour for a near miss. And when two players share a ranking position, the tile turns green even though they are different people; a fully green row does not mean you have solved it. Only naming the exact player counts: then the name turns green and “You got it!” appears.

Strategy to bring your average down

The first guess is a probe

With a hundred candidates, the worst opener is your favourite player. The best one is whoever splits the pool the most. Think of the Ranking as a list you can keep halving: a player from the middle (around #50 in the men’s, #25 in the women’s) leaves roughly half the candidates on either side. The tile shows their exact position even if you did not remember it.

Also pick someone from a country that is common on the tour: there are little more than a dozen distinct countries across the whole pool, and a green on Country cuts it down massively.

Cross the clues before your second guess

After the first row you hold a Ranking bracket (better or worse than #N), an Age bracket and a Height bracket, plus a yes or no on Country, Side and, in the men’s, Hand. The second guess has to respect all of them at once: a player on the right side of the ranking but from the country you already ruled out wastes the turn.

An order that works:

1. Pin down the Ranking first. It is the clue that cuts the most and the only one whose order you carry in your head. Keep halving the bracket.
2. Use Age and Height to choose among the players left inside the bracket. Look at the size of the jump: if your guess was 22 and the arrow points up, almost the whole top is still in play; if they were 33 and it also points up, very few are left.
3. Leave Side and Hand for tie-breaks. They are binary, but hardly anyone remembers them for the entire top: they confirm better than they search.

Reread the earlier rows before each new name: the answer has to fit all of them, not just the last.

Common mistakes

• Reading the Ranking ↑ as “a higher number”. It means “ranked better”.
• Treating the grey “No data” as a miss and ruling out players who still fit. A handful of men’s players have no Hand on record.
• Naming someone you have already tried: the search box rejects it with “You already guessed that player”. It does not cost a guess, but it does not move you forward either.
• Opening with yesterday’s player or with #1 “to see”. Yesterday’s does not repeat, and the ends of the ranking split very little.

The other challenges

If the classic is not enough, there are two more modes. In the photo men’s and photo women’s challenges there are no data clues: the player hides behind a pixelated photo, you get six guesses and every miss brings it a little more into focus. In the pairs challenge you are given a player and a tournament and have to say who partnered them there, out of four options, with three lives and a running streak. And for rules questions, there is the rulebook.

Frequently asked questions

Does the player change at the same time for everyone?

Yes. The challenge day runs on Madrid time, so the new player arrives at midnight in Spain for everyone, wherever you play from. The English version hides the same player as the Spanish one.

Can I play the women’s and the men’s version on the same day?

Yes. They are independent draws, each with its own hidden player, and each game is saved separately.

Is my game saved if I reload the page?

Yes. Today’s guesses are stored in your browser and reappear already revealed when you come back. They are cleared when the day changes. Two caveats: they live in that browser and device, not in an account, and in private browsing they may not survive.

Is there a limit on guesses? Can yesterday’s player come up again?

No limit: you play until you solve it. And the draw rules out whoever came up yesterday and steers clear of the last seven days’ players, so the “Yesterday was …” line is a free elimination.

Go and play

You know how to read the arrows and who to open with. What is left is practice: open today’s classic men’s challenge or the women’s and try to solve it in one guess fewer than yesterday.