Word Guess

Wordle is the 5-letter word-guessing game created by Brooklyn-based engineer Josh Wardle in October 2021 as a gift for his partner. By January 2022 it had millions of daily players, and on January 31 2022 The New York Times bought it (reportedly for a “low seven figures”). The single-puzzle-per-day format and shareable green-yellow-grey emoji result grid made it a viral phenomenon — at one point, “Wordle” results in your social media feed were unavoidable.

How to play

• You have 6 guesses to find the hidden 5-letter word. Here there’s a new random word every game, so you can play as many rounds as you like with the New word button.
• Type a 5-letter word (keyboard or on-screen keys) and press Enter. Guesses must be real 5-letter words from the game’s dictionary of about 8,500 words; anything else shows “Not in word list”.
• Letters are colored:
  • Green — correct letter in the correct position.
  • Yellow — correct letter in the wrong position.
  • Grey — letter is not in the word.
• Use the color feedback to narrow down the answer.
• If you don’t get it in 6 guesses, or you press Give up, the game ends and shows the word.
• Your wins and current streak are saved in your browser. A loss or Give up resets the streak.

Beginner strategy: opening words

• Use 5 distinct common letters. Don’t waste a guess on words with duplicate letters early (like “BUDDY” which uses D twice).
• Cover vowels and common consonants. A good opener tests E, A, R, O, T, S — the 6 most common letters in English. You can’t test 6 letters in one word, so prioritize.
• Popular openers: in the NYT game, CRANE, SLATE, STARE and ADIEU are favourites. All of those work here too, as do RAISE, ARISE, LATER, ALERT and AUDIO (vowel-heavy).
• The 3Blue1Brown analysis: mathematician Grant Sanderson’s information-theory analysis first ranked CRANE highly, then a corrected follow-up put SALET at the top for the NYT answer list.
• Don’t follow RAISE with ARISE. Your second guess should test 5 DIFFERENT letters from your first. Don’t waste guesses re-testing letters you already have feedback on.

Intermediate strategy

• Guess 2 should test 5 different letters. If guess 1 gave you no greens or yellows, your second guess should cover the next 5 most common letters. Common combo here: RAISE then COUNT.
• Guess 2 should test 5 different letters even if you got yellows. Yellow tells you a letter is in the word but not where. Don’t waste your next guess trying to place that yellow — keep gathering letters.
• Use forced positions only at guesses 4-5. Once you have 3-4 known letters and 1-2 unknowns, focus on word patterns that fit.
• Watch for double letters. Words like APPLE, BLOOD, GREEN have repeated letters. If your guess feedback doesn’t add up (e.g. you got an L green but your final word seems to use two Ls), consider doubles.
• The hard mode bias. The NYT Wordle’s “hard mode” (not offered in this version) requires you to use any revealed greens/yellows in subsequent guesses. Most experts prefer EASY mode because it allows pure information-gathering guesses.

Advanced strategy

• The 5-letter word list is limited. The NYT Wordle dictionary contains about 2,300 possible answer words (curated from a larger 12,000+ accepted-guess list). Knowing the answer list narrows possibilities massively. This version picks its answer from about 1,150 common words, and accepts about 8,500 words as guesses.
• The “S” trap. NYT Wordle answers RARELY end in S (plurals were left off the answer list). This game’s list does include a few, such as TIMES, TRIES and NEEDS, so don’t rule them out completely.
• Common Wordle answer patterns: _OUND (ROUND, SOUND, FOUND, POUND), _IGHT (LIGHT, NIGHT, MIGHT, RIGHT, SIGHT, TIGHT, FIGHT), _ATER (LATER, WATER). Memorize the families.
• Y as a vowel. Y is frequently the 5th letter (HAPPY, EARLY, PARTY). Don’t forget to test it.
• High-contrast mode. The NYT game offers an orange/blue high-contrast setting. This version uses green, yellow and grey only.

The math of Wordle

• Information theory. Each guess provides bits of information. The “best” guesses maximize expected information given the current possibility space.
• Optimal solver achievement: a perfect-knowledge solver wins the original NYT Wordle in about 3.42 guesses on average.
• Proven optimum: in 2022 Alex Selby showed that about 3.42 (opening with SALET) is the best possible average with perfect play.
• Strict losses are rare: from any reasonable opening, you should never need all 6 guesses for a typical Wordle answer. If you do, your guessing strategy probably wasted information.

Wordle history and culture

• 2021-10 — Initial release: Josh Wardle creates Wordle as a gift for his partner Palak Shah, a word-game fan, then releases it publicly. Initially just on his website.
• 2021-12 — Viral shareable grid: Wardle adds the “share” button that copies the day’s result as colored emoji squares. The grid is the marketing — it appears in your social feeds with no spoilers.
• 2022-01 — millions of daily players. From a few dozen players in November, it grows to hundreds of thousands in early January and millions by the end of the month.
• 2022-01-31 — NYT acquires Wordle. Wardle reportedly receives “a low seven figures.” Free play continues.
• Early 2022 — Wordle clones explode: Quordle (4 boards), Octordle (8), Sedecordle (16), Heardle (audio Wordle), Worldle (geography), Crosswordle (crossword Wordle hybrid).
• 2022 — WordleBot: NYT publishes the official Wordle solver and lets you compare your guess sequence to optimal.

Common mistakes

• Repeating a known-grey letter. Once a letter shows grey, it’s not in the word. Don’t include it in later guesses.
• Over-relying on one opener. A fixed opener is fine, but your second guess should adapt to what the first one revealed.
• Guessing at guess 3 instead of probing. If you have 3 letters known and need 2 more, don’t commit to a possible-answer guess that fits all 3 — use guess 3 to TEST 5 new letters and narrow further.
• Forgetting about Y. Y appears in surprisingly many Wordle answers (EARLY, STORY, HEAVY). Beginners miss it.
• Hard mode = harder, not better. Hard mode forces you to use revealed letters, which often forces a sub-optimal guess. Easy mode is more strategic.

Wordle variants and clones

• Quordle — 4 simultaneous Wordles. Each guess applies to all 4 boards.
• Octordle — 8 boards. 13 guesses.
• Sedecordle — 16 boards. 21 guesses.
• Worldle — guess a country from its outline. Distance/direction hints.
• Heardle — guess a song from a few seconds of audio.
• Globle — guess a country with heat-map hints based on proximity.
• Letter Boxed (NYT) — connect letters around a square to form words.
• Connections (NYT) — group 16 words into 4 categories of 4.

FAQ

• Q: Is the answer the same for everyone? A: In the NYT Wordle, yes: one answer per day, the same for every player globally. In this version each game picks a random word, so you can play again straight away.
• Q: What’s the best opening word? A: For the NYT game, solver analyses (including 3Blue1Brown’s corrected video) favour SALET, with CRANE, SLATE and SOARE close behind. All of those except SALET and SOARE are accepted in this version, and RAISE, ARISE or LATER work well too.
• Q: Are guesses limited to dictionary words? A: Yes. The NYT Wordle accepts about 12,000 valid 5-letter words (more permissive than its answer list of ~2,300). This version accepts about 8,500 five-letter words as guesses, and its answers come from a shorter list of about 1,150 common words.
• Q: Can the same letter appear twice in a Wordle answer? A: Yes — words like APPLE, GREEN, ALLOW can be the answer here.

For other word games, try Spelling Bee, Word Connect, Anagram, or Crossword.