How to Play Wordle
Wordle gives you six chances to guess a hidden five-letter word. Every player in the world gets the same word each day, and you get exactly one puzzle every 24 hours. This page covers everything you need to start playing and understand what the tiles are telling you.
What Is Wordle?
Wordle is a free daily word puzzle from The New York Times. One word, one puzzle, one chance per day. No app download needed and no subscription required to play the daily game.
You get a blank five-by-six grid. Your job is to figure out the hidden five-letter word before you run out of rows. After each guess the tiles change color to show you what you got right, what is in the word but in the wrong spot, and what is not in the word at all.
The whole thing takes about two to five minutes depending on how quickly the word comes to you. Because everyone worldwide plays the same puzzle, you can share your result with friends without spoiling the answer. That little grid of colored squares became one of the most shared things on social media when the game blew up in early 2022.
If you need hints for today’s Wordle before you finish this page, those are on the homepage with six spoiler-free clues you can reveal one at a time.
Wordle Rules: How the Game Works
The rules are simple but there are a few things worth knowing before your first guess, especially around what counts as a valid word and how repeated letters behave.
Every puzzle uses a five-letter answer. You have six rows to find it. Each row is one complete guess.
Wordle only accepts words from its 12,966 word dictionary. Random letter strings will not go through. If you type a word and it shakes, it means the game does not recognize it.
After each guess every tile flips to green, yellow, or grey. That feedback is the whole game. Use it before typing the next word.
The puzzle resets at midnight in your local timezone. Once you finish or use all six guesses, you wait until the next day.
If you do not solve the puzzle within six guesses the answer reveals itself and your current streak goes back to zero. No partial credit.
What Do the Wordle Colors Mean?
Understanding what each color tells you is the foundation of the whole game. Get this right and everything else follows naturally.
That letter belongs exactly where you put it. Keep it in that same spot in every guess that follows. Do not move it.
The letter is in the answer but not in that spot. Move it somewhere else in your next guess. Leaving a yellow letter in the same position again wastes a full row.
This letter has no more copies in the answer. Stop using it. One exception: if the answer has a repeated letter, one copy can show grey while the other shows green or yellow. Grey means no additional copies, not always that the letter is completely absent.
The repeated letter rule catches a lot of people. If you guess SPEED and only one E comes back green or yellow, the answer has just one E. The second E going grey does not mean E is wrong entirely.
How a Real Wordle Game Plays Out
Here is puzzle 1953 from October 24, 2026. The answer was HOLEY. This is my actual solve path from that day, showing what each guess revealed and how the next one followed from it.
Notice how each guess had a purpose. The first two eliminated letters and locked positions. The third confirmed the shape. The fourth closed it out. That pattern works on almost every puzzle.
Where to Play Wordle
The official game is run by The New York Times. There is one place to play the real version and a couple of ways to get to it.
On desktop or mobile browser, go to nytimes.com/games/wordle. No account needed for the daily puzzle. The game works in any modern browser without downloading anything.
On iPhone, open the App Store and search for NYT Games. On Android, search the same in Google Play. Download the official app, open it, and find Wordle in the games tab. You can play without an account but signing in saves your streak and stats across devices, which is worth doing if your streak matters to you.
Avoid third-party Wordle clones in app stores. They are not affiliated with NYT and many use different or incorrect word lists. The real game is free so there is no reason to use a copy.
What Is Wordle Hard Mode?
Hard mode adds one extra rule: every confirmed letter must appear in all future guesses. It sounds like a small change but it has a real effect on how you play.
What changes in Hard Mode
In normal mode you can make a guess that tests new letters even if it does not use the confirmed ones. That is called a diagnostic guess and it is one of the best tools for narrowing down multiple candidates at once.
Hard mode removes that option. Once a letter goes green it has to stay in that exact spot. Once a letter goes yellow it has to appear somewhere in the next word. Every guess must include all the information you already have.
The problem this creates is called the word family trap. Say you figure out that the answer ends in OUND. In normal mode you can spend one guess testing BATCH, FLICK and GRUMP to knock out possible first letters. In hard mode you cannot do that. You have to guess a real OUND word every time, which means you might burn three or four guesses on BOUND, FOUND, HOUND and MOUND before hitting the right one.
To turn on Hard Mode, tap the gear icon before making your first guess. It cannot be toggled mid-puzzle. Your share grid will show an asterisk when you solve in Hard Mode.
Hard mode is worth trying once you are comfortable with the basics. It is more challenging but it also teaches you to use tile feedback more precisely because you have no room to waste a row.
Best Wordle Starting Words
Your first guess sets up everything that follows. A good opener tests the most commonly appearing letters in Wordle answers so whatever comes back green, yellow or grey, you have learned something useful.
The three strongest openers based on WordleBot data are TRACE, SLATE and CRANE. All three score 99 out of 100. They cover S, L, A, T, E, R, C and N in two guesses, which are eight of the most common letters in Wordle answers. S starts nearly 15 percent of all past Wordle answers, E appears in over 40 percent of them, and R shows up in about 38 percent.
ADIEU is a popular choice because of its four vowels but it is not in the Wordle answer list at all, and loading a guess with vowels leaves you with only one consonant slot to work with. Vowels matter but consonants do the heavier lifting in five-letter words.
For the full ranked list with letter frequency data behind each word, the Best Starting Words guide has everything broken down by score, letter coverage and why each one works.
Wordle Tips for Beginners
These five tips come directly from patterns that show up in almost every puzzle. Start with these and you will cut your average guess count down quickly.
Once a letter turns grey it is confirmed absent. Including it in a future guess wastes one of your five letter slots on something you already know is wrong. Track which letters are off the board and work around them.
Yellow means right letter, wrong spot. If you leave a yellow letter in the same position on the next guess you already know that guess is wrong before you submit it. Move it somewhere else every time.
About 31 percent of Wordle answers contain a letter that appears twice. If you have confirmed several letters but no complete word comes to mind, try putting one of them in twice. ABBEY, FUZZY and LINEN are all past answers with repeated letters.
In standard English around 31 percent of five-letter words end in S. In the Wordle answer list that drops to under 2 percent. NYT deliberately avoids plural nouns and third-person verb forms. If you are choosing between two candidates and one ends in S, pick the other one.
There is no timer. The puzzle stays open all day. If you are stuck, step away for a few minutes and come back. The answer often clicks when you stop forcing it.
Want more advanced strategy? The Wordle tips and strategy guide covers diagnostic guesses, word family traps, and how to consistently solve in three or four guesses.
How Wordle Was Created
Wordle started as a personal project and became one of the most widely played word games in the world within a few months. The story behind it is worth knowing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Quick answers to the questions that come up most often about Wordle rules and how the game works.
How many guesses do you get in Wordle?
+You get six guesses. If you do not solve it in six the answer reveals itself and your streak resets to zero. Hard mode gives you the same six attempts but requires you to use every confirmed letter in all future guesses.
What does green mean in Wordle?
+Green means right letter in the right position. Keep that letter in the exact same spot in every guess that follows. Do not move it.
What does yellow mean in Wordle?
+Yellow means the letter is in the answer but not in that position. Move it to a different spot in your next guess. Keeping a yellow letter in the same position is a wasted row because you already know it does not belong there.
Can the same letter appear twice in a Wordle answer?
+Yes. About 31 percent of all Wordle answers have at least one repeated letter. When a letter appears twice, one copy can return grey while the other shows yellow or green. A grey tile does not always mean the letter is completely absent from the answer.
What are the most common letters in Wordle answers?
+S starts nearly 15 percent of all past Wordle answers. E appears in over 40 percent of answers in any position. R shows up in about 38 percent of words. A, T, L, N and C are also highly frequent. That is why openers like SLATE, TRACE and CRANE are so effective at pulling useful information from the first guess.
Do Wordle answers end in S?
+Almost never. In standard English around 31 percent of five-letter words end in S. In the Wordle answer pool that number drops to under 2 percent because NYT avoids plural nouns and third-person verb forms. If you are stuck between two candidates and one ends in S, the other one is almost certainly right.
Is using Wordle hints or help considered cheating?
+Wordle is a single player game with no opponent and no prize. How you play it is entirely your call. Most players use hints only when they are genuinely stuck rather than on every puzzle, since doing it daily removes most of the challenge. But there is no rule against it.
How do I share my Wordle result without spoiling it?
+After you finish, Wordle gives you a share button that generates a grid of colored squares. It shows your guess count and the color pattern but no letters at all. Paste it anywhere and other players can see how you did without seeing the word.
Does Wordle repeat past answers?
+Yes, since February 2026. NYT started reusing words from the early puzzles. When a repeated answer appears, Wordle shows a note on the results screen. You can check all repeated answers in the past answers archive, where every repeat is marked with x2 next to the word.
How many words are in the Wordle dictionary?
+You can guess any of 12,966 five-letter words and Wordle will accept them. The actual answer pool is much smaller. The original list had 2,309 words, and NYT has adjusted it since the acquisition. Only words from that smaller pool ever appear as the daily answer.
Can you play past Wordle puzzles?
+Not for free once the puzzle resets. The free version gives no way back after midnight. A NYT Games subscription unlocks the full archive. If you missed a recent puzzle, every past answer from puzzle 0 onwards is in the past answers archive.
Where can I find hints for todays Wordle?
+The homepage has six spoiler-free hints for the current puzzle, updated every day at midnight. You can reveal them one at a time and stop whenever you feel ready to guess.
More Wordle Help
Each of these pages covers one specific part of Wordle in full detail.