Hidden, Public, and Puzzlelike Information: Separate an Unknown Future from a Known Secret

Technical terms: Unknown information, Hidden information, Public information, Private information, Puzzlelike hidden information

These terms describe who can know a fact and how it becomes available.

Unknown information has not yet been determined or revealed to anyone, such as the next tile in a shuffled bag.
Hidden information is relevant state unavailable to everyone.
Private information is a kind of hidden information known to one person or group but not another.
Public information is available to all players.
Puzzlelike hidden information must be uncovered through clues, exploration, experimentation, or inference.

See it in Scrabble, Hangman, and Wordle

Scrabble's next tile is unknown to everyone. In Hangman, the setter privately knows the answer while guesses turn letters into public information. Wordle gives the solver puzzlelike hidden information supplied by a system rather than an opposing person.

What you can do with it

Name who knows each important fact and when it changes category. Hidden information can create deduction, surprise, bluffing, discovery, and pacing, but it can also obscure feedback and burden memory.

Ask a player

Did uncovering information create the puzzle, and could you tell what your evidence actually established?

Nearby ideas

Authorial inference — infer a human setter's intended thought.
Curatorial puzzle — uncover why selected things belong together.
Memory — retain information that was once public.
Probability management — reason about an unknown distribution.

Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev, Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design (2020), UNC-07–UNC-08, pp. 230–232; Richard Garfield, Skaff Elias, and Robert Gutschera, Characteristics of Games (2012), pp. 161–166. ---