How to Play Wordle: Rules, Colors and Your First Game

Wordle is a daily word puzzle: you get six tries to guess a hidden five-letter word, and after each try the game colors your letters to show how close you are. That's the whole game. It takes about five minutes, there's one puzzle a day, and everyone in the world gets the same word, which is why your group chat fills up with little green and yellow squares every morning.

We've played it daily while building the hint tools on this site, and we've also watched a lot of first-timers get confused by the same two or three things. This guide covers the rules, the colors, the one rule almost everyone misreads (repeated letters), and a simple plan for your first week.

The rules in one minute

One word a day: A new puzzle appears at midnight in your local time zone.
Six guesses: You type a five-letter word and press Enter. That's one guess.
Real words only: Every guess must be a real English word. Wordle won't accept "AEIOU" or random letters, so you can't just test letters freely.
Colors after each guess: Each letter turns green, yellow or gray.
Win or lose: Get all five letters green within six guesses and you win. Run out of guesses and the game shows you the answer.
Share: When you finish, you can copy a spoiler-free grid of colored squares to send to friends.

What the colors mean

The colors are the whole game, so they're worth getting exactly right.

Green: right letter, right spot

A green tile means that letter is in the answer in that exact position. If you guessed CRANE and the A is green, the answer has an A in the middle. Keep it there in every later guess (you don't have to, but it's usually smart).

Yellow: right letter, wrong spot

A yellow tile means the letter is in the answer, but not where you put it. If the R in CRANE is yellow, the answer has an R, but not in the second position. That tells you two things at once: R is in, and spot two is not R. New players often keep a yellow letter in the same place. That wastes a guess, because the game already told you it doesn't go there.

Gray: not in the word

A gray tile means that letter isn't in the answer. Don't use it again. Your on-screen keyboard also turns gray for those letters, which helps you remember.

The repeated-letter rule (the one everyone gets wrong)

Here's the part that confused us too at first. A word can use the same letter more than once, and about 31% of Wordle answers do. Across our archive of 1,928 answers, 600 have at least one repeated letter, like GEESE, LEVEL or BLOOD.

The colors follow these rules:

Each copy is colored separately: If you guess a word with two E's, each E gets its own color.
The game counts: If the answer has only one E, only one of your E's turns green or yellow. The other turns gray.
Gray doesn't always mean "no E at all": If one E is yellow and the other is gray, the answer has exactly one E. The gray just means "not a second one."
Green wins over yellow: If one of your E's is in the right place, that one turns green first, and any extra E turns gray.

So when you see a letter both yellow and gray in the same guess, read it as "this letter appears once." When you see it green in one spot and yellow in another, the answer has it at least twice.

A worked example

Let's say the answer is RIVER, which was an actual Wordle answer, and you start with CRANE.

Guess 1, CRANE: C gray, R yellow, A gray, N gray, E yellow. So the answer has an R (not second) and an E (not fifth), and no C, A or N.
Guess 2, TIGER: T gray, I green, G gray, E green, R green. Now you know _ I _ E R.
Guess 3: You need a word like _ I _ E R without C, A, N, T or G. RIVER, FIBER, LIVER, WIPER, DIVER and HIKER all fit. Remember the R from guess 1 wasn't in spot two, but it could be in spot one. RIVER uses R twice, which fits: one R at the start and one at the end.

This is exactly where the repeated-letter rule matters. Plenty of players never think to put R in twice.

How to choose your first word

Your first guess has no information to work with, so it should gather as much as it can. Two ideas help:

Use common letters: E, A, R, O, T, L, I and S are the most common letters in Wordle answers. E alone shows up in 47% of all answers so far.
Avoid repeats: A first word with five different letters tests five letters instead of four.

When we tested every common five-letter word against every past answer, IRATE, RAISE and ARISE left the fewest possible answers on average. CRANE, SLATE and TRACE are close behind. Vowel-heavy words like ADIEU and AUDIO feel clever but do worse, because they test rare vowels and almost none of the common consonants.

A simple plan for your first week

You don't need a system to enjoy Wordle, but a loose plan keeps you from panicking on guess five.

Pick a starter and stick with it. Using the same first word every day makes the colors easier to read, because you learn what each result usually means.
Use guess two to test new letters. If your first word got mostly gray, try a word with five fresh letters instead of forcing a guess. Guesses two and three are for learning.
Start solving on guess three or four. By then you usually know two or three letters. Now each guess should be a word that could actually be the answer.
Think about patterns, not just letters. Endings like ER, LY, CH and SE are common. Our archive shows 111 answers ending in ER alone.
Consider a repeated letter when you're stuck. If nothing fits, try doubling a letter you already know.
Slow down on the last two guesses. Write the letters on paper if it helps. A calm fifth guess beats a rushed one.

What counts as a valid guess

Wordle only accepts words from its own list, and that list is bigger than the list of answers. That surprises people.

Guesses can be unusual: Plenty of words that will never be the answer are still allowed as guesses, including plurals like TAPES and less common words.
Answers are everyday words: The answer list leans toward words most people know.
Rejected words don't cost a guess: If you type something that isn't in the list, the row shakes and nothing happens. You can fix it and try again.
No proper nouns: Names of people, places and brands aren't allowed.

This gap is useful. Sometimes the smartest guess is a word that can't be the answer but tests five letters you need to check. In normal mode, that's completely allowed.

How the keyboard helps you

The on-screen keyboard under the grid is easy to ignore, and it shouldn't be. As you play, each key takes the best color it has earned so far.

Gray keys: Letters you've ruled out. Scan these before every guess so you don't reuse one.
Yellow keys: Letters you know are in the word but haven't placed yet.
Green keys: Letters you've placed. A key stays green even if the same letter was yellow in another guess.
Plain keys: Letters you haven't tried. When you're stuck, look here first for letters worth testing.

We keep an eye on the plain keys around guess three. If common letters like R, S, T or L are still untried, a guess that uses them usually pays off.

Settings worth knowing about

Open the settings (the gear icon) and you'll find a few options that make the game easier to enjoy:

Dark theme: Easier on the eyes for late-night or early-morning puzzles.
High contrast mode: Swaps green and yellow for orange and blue. It's a big help for players with color vision differences, and some people just find it clearer.
Hard mode: Makes you use every revealed letter in later guesses. It can only be turned on before your first guess of the day.
Onscreen keyboard input only: Useful on shared computers or when a physical keyboard keeps typing into the wrong place.

How to read the share grid

When you finish, you can tap Share to copy a grid of colored squares. It shows the colors of each guess, the puzzle number and your score, like "Wordle 1,929 4/6". It never shows letters, so it can't spoil the word for anyone. An X instead of a number means the puzzle wasn't solved. Friends compare these grids to see who took the smarter path, not just the fewer guesses. A grid that goes from mostly gray to all green in one jump usually means a lucky guess, and everyone in the chat knows it.

Normal mode vs. hard mode

In the settings you'll find Hard Mode. It adds one rule: any letter the game has revealed must be used in later guesses. Green letters stay in place, and yellow letters must appear somewhere in every guess after that. It sounds small, but it stops you from spending a guess on fresh letters, which is often the best move. We'd recommend playing normal mode until you're comfortable, then trying hard mode for a challenge. We'll go deeper into it in a separate article.

Where to get help when you're stuck

Getting a hint isn't cheating. It's a puzzle you play for fun, and a nudge can save a streak you've built for months. On this site:

Wordle Hint Today: Five hints that go from gentle to obvious, plus a tool where you type your guesses and get a hint that fits your game.
Wordle Solver: Enter your guesses and colors, and see every word that still fits.
Five letter word finder: Search by pattern, like _I_ER, with letters to include or exclude.
Online Dictionary: Look up a word you've never heard of. Wordle answers are usually common words, but not always.

Tips we wish we'd known on day one

Don't reuse gray letters. It's the most common way to waste a guess. Watch the keyboard.
Move your yellows. A yellow letter never belongs in the spot where it turned yellow.
Plurals are rare. Wordle accepts plural guesses, but only a handful of answers so far end in a single S, and most of those, like FOCUS or OASIS, aren't plurals.
Answers are familiar words. The list was built from words most people know. If you're choosing between a common word and an obscure one, go common.
Keep your share grid spoiler-free. The emoji grid shows only colors, never letters, so you can post it without ruining the day for anyone.

Is Wordle free?

Yes. Wordle is free to play on the New York Times Games website and app. You don't need a subscription for the daily puzzle. The Times bought the game from its creator, Josh Wardle, in January 2022, and it has stayed free since. Some other NYT games now need a subscription, but Wordle isn't one of them.

Quick answers to common questions

How many guesses do you get in Wordle? Six.

Can you play more than one Wordle a day? Not in the official game. There's one puzzle per day. You can check past Wordle answers to see earlier words.

What time does the new Wordle come out? Midnight, in your own time zone.

Do answers ever repeat? Since February 2026, yes. Older answers have started coming back.

What's a good score? Solving in four guesses is a solid game. Three is great. Two is mostly luck, and we're still proud of every one of ours.