How to play the five letter word game
- Type a real five-letter word on your keyboard or the on-screen keys and press Enter. If it is not a word, "Not in word list" appears and the guess is not used up.
- Read the tiles.
- Green: right letter, right spot.
- Yellow: the letter is in the word, but somewhere else.
- Gray: the letter is not in the word.
- Check the keyboard. Each key takes the best color that letter has earned, so used and ruled-out letters are easy to spot.
- Win within six guesses. Run out and the answer is shown; one tap on New Word starts the next round.
Wordle unlimited style rules: repeated letters and scoring
Answers come from a list of 662 common English five-letter words, so you will not meet obscure dictionary entries. Guesses are checked against a larger list of about 6,900 accepted words: every guess must be a real five-letter word, so random letter strings like AEIOU are turned away with "Not in word list". A rejected guess costs nothing, so just fix it and press Enter again.
Greens are marked first. A letter is colored only as many times as it appears in the answer: guess two Es when the answer has one, and the second E stays gray.
| Solved on guess | Points |
|---|---|
| 1 | 600 |
| 2 | 500 |
| 3 | 400 |
| 4 | 300 |
| 5 | 200 |
| 6 | 100 |
| Not solved | 0 |
The toolbar tracks your time and guesses used, and results count toward the word game leaderboard.
Strategy and starting words
A strong first guess tests frequent letters. Every later guess should either cut the list of candidates sharply or solve.
- Open with common letters. CRANE, SLATE, STARE and RAISE cover the letters that show up most in five-letter words.
- Or test vowels first. AUDIO reveals three vowels in one go; follow it with a consonant-heavy word.
- Use a fixed pair. CRANE followed by SPLIT checks ten different letters before you try to solve.
- Never reuse gray letters. A quick glance at the keyboard saves wasted slots.
- Move yellows. Put a yellow letter in a new position to learn where it lives.
- Think in patterns. Endings like -ER, -ED and -LY, and pairs like SH, TH, CR and ST, fill gaps fast.
- Remember doubles. GREEN, SKILL and APPLE repeat a letter, a common reason a word seems impossible.
- Break word families. With _IGHT, a guess like MOTHS tests several first letters at once instead of trying LIGHT, MIGHT and NIGHT one by one.
- Slow down at guesses five and six. List every word that fits before you commit.
Daily word game
The daily word is the same for every player on a given day and is ranked by how few guesses you needed. Find it on the daily puzzles page with the daily Sudoku, Solitaire, Mahjong, FreeCell, Word Search and Minesweeper, and keep your streak going. After you finish, you can share a challenge link so a friend tries the same word.
Word duel rules
A word duel puts two players on the same secret word at the same time. Play online with whoever is available, or send a private link to a friend.
- Solving beats not solving. If only one player finds the word, that player wins.
- Fewer guesses wins. If both solve, the lower guess count wins; on equal counts, the faster finish wins.
- Early wins. If you solve and your opponent can no longer beat your count, the duel ends right there.
- 5 minutes. If neither player solves, the duel is a draw.
You see your opponent's colored rows as they play, without the letters, so you can tell how close they are.
Playing on a phone
The on-screen keyboard sits directly under the six rows, with large keys colored as you go, so you never need the phone's own keyboard. Each half-typed word is saved as you type, which means switching apps mid-guess loses nothing. Want a home screen icon? Install NitroPlayer and the game opens full screen.
Where the five-letter format comes from
Guessing a word from letter feedback is old. The pencil and paper game Jotto, published in 1955, used five-letter words and reported how many letters matched. Colored clues became familiar through the TV show Lingo, and in 2021 a simple daily browser puzzle made the format a global habit. This game is an independent take with unlimited rounds and duels, and is not affiliated with the publisher of Wordle.
If you prefer one letter at a time, try the Hangman game with categories.
