How to Play Wordle

Section 01 · Rules

The Rules in 60 Seconds

1. 01
   Guess any valid five-letter word. Type the letters and press Enter to submit. The word must be in the game's dictionary; nonsense letter strings will be rejected.
2. 02
   Read the color feedback. Each tile changes color to tell you how that letter compares to the hidden answer. Three possible colors, explained in the next section.
3. 03
   Use what you learned to refine the next guess. Keep green letters where they are, move yellow letters somewhere else, avoid gray letters entirely.
4. 04
   Solve the word in six guesses or fewer. The earlier you solve, the better your stats. If guess six is wrong, the answer is revealed and the round ends.

Section 02 · Color logic

Reading the Colors

There are exactly three feedback states per tile. Once you have these memorised, you have the entire rule set:

Section 03 · Opening

Strategy: Picking a Starter Word

Your first guess has zero information about the answer, so the smartest opener is the word that statistically eliminates the most possibilities. We ran the math: five letters — E, A, R, O, T — appear in 91.6% of all common answers, so an opener that covers as many of them as possible is the strongest opening move.

Two rules of thumb for openers:

• No duplicate letters. A doubled letter wastes one of your five information slots. SASSY tells you about S, A, Y — three unique letters. RAISE tells you about five.
• Stack vowels and high-frequency consonants. Words like RAISE, IRATE, AROSE, ALTER, and SLATE all hit four or five of the most common letters in the answer pool.

Our full data-backed top-10 starter word ranking lives on the Infinite Wordle homepage, including the exact letters each one covers and the average percentage of the pool it eliminates.

Section 04 · Mid game

Strategy: The Middle of the Round

Guesses two through four are where most rounds are won or lost. The single biggest mistake at this stage is wasting a guess by rearranging letters you already know about, instead of testing new ones.

A specific example: you guess RAISE and get one yellow on R. Your second guess is ROUTE — also gets a yellow on R, no greens. Now guess three needs to do two things at once: place R in a brand new slot AND test new letters. CRYPT, BLURT, or GRIND are good moves; ROOST is not, because it only places R again without learning much new.

When you have two or more yellow letters and no greens by your third guess, consider an "information guess": pick a word with five completely fresh letters even if you know it cannot be the answer. You burn one slot, but you light up half the alphabet in a single row.

Section 05 · End game

Strategy: The Last Two Guesses

By guess five you usually have most of the letters located. The temptation is to lock in a likely-looking word and hope. Resist unless you've actually narrowed the candidates to one.

If multiple words still fit the pattern (for example: _IGHT could be FIGHT, LIGHT, MIGHT, NIGHT, RIGHT, SIGHT, TIGHT — seven words!), you have two options:

• Test specific letters with one careful guess. A word like FLINT tests F, L, N, T in one shot — eliminating four of the seven candidates depending on which colors come back.
• Commit only if you've narrowed to one. When the only word that fits all constraints is unambiguous, type it. When two or more still fit, you risk losing the round on a coin flip.

Section 06 · Mistakes

Three Common Mistakes

1. 01
   Ignoring yellow letters. A yellow letter is high-value information. Your next guess should always place it in a different slot, never abandon it.
2. 02
   Forgetting about doubled letters. Roughly one in seven answers contains a repeated letter. When your guess pattern feels impossible to satisfy with five unique letters, try doubling one.
3. 03
   Committing to the first plausible word. Five-letter words ending in -IGHT, -OUND, -OUGH, and -OOSE each have multiple valid candidates. List them mentally before you type.

Section 07 · FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Ready to play

Try the Strategy on a Live Game

The fastest way to internalise these rules is to play 10 rounds in a row and watch your average guess count drop. We made an unlimited-mode game so you can.