How to Play Wordle: Rules, Colors, and Tips for Beginners

What Is Wordle?

Wordle is a free daily word puzzle published by The New York Times. You get six attempts to figure out a hidden five-letter word, and after each guess the game gives you color-coded feedback showing which letters are correct, which are in the word but in the wrong spot, and which are not in the word at all.

The game was created by Josh Wardle, a Welsh software engineer living in Brooklyn, originally as a personal project for his partner. It went public in October 2021, and within three months daily players surged from 90 to over 2 million. The New York Times acquired it in January 2022.

Two features set Wordle apart from other word games. There is only one puzzle per day, shared worldwide, so everyone is solving the same word. And the spoiler-free colored grid for sharing results on social media fueled its viral spread. No ads, no in-app purchases, no account required.

The Rules of Wordle

1. Each puzzle has one hidden five-letter English word.
2. You get six attempts to guess it.
3. Every guess must be a valid five-letter word from the game's dictionary.
4. After each guess, every letter receives a color: green, yellow, or grey.
5. The puzzle resets daily at midnight in your local time zone.
6. One puzzle per day, no replays on the official site.

The game tracks your stats, including total games played, win percentage, current streak, and max streak, in your browser's local storage. Clearing your browser data will reset them.

Understanding the Colors

The color system is the heart of Wordle, and understanding it fully makes the difference between guessing blindly and solving with purpose.

Green means the letter is correct and in the right position. Lock it in place for every future guess. A green tile is a solved position.

Yellow means the letter is somewhere in the answer, but not in the spot where you guessed it. You need to move it to a different position on the next guess. This tells you two things at once: the letter belongs in the word, and it does not belong in that specific slot.

Grey means the letter is not in the answer at all. Do not use it again. Grey tiles are often undervalued, but they are powerful because they eliminate possibilities.

There is one special case worth knowing about. If you guess a word with two of the same letter and the answer only has one, one tile will be colored (green or yellow) and the other will turn grey. This confirms the letter appears exactly once.

Step-by-Step Walkthrough of a Sample Game

Here is a sample game with a hypothetical answer of CRIMP, showing how each guess builds on the last.

Guess 1: SLATE. S (grey), L (grey), A (grey), T (grey), E (grey). All five letters eliminated. Zero matches feels discouraging, but five common letters have been ruled out in one move, and that information is valuable.

Guess 2: GRIND. G (grey), R (yellow), I (yellow), N (grey), D (grey). R and I are in the answer but not in those positions. Three more letters eliminated, and two confirmed present.

Guess 3: PRICK. P (yellow), R (yellow), I (yellow), C (yellow), K (grey). Four yellow tiles. P, R, I, and C are all in the answer, but none in the right spot. That is a lot of confirmed letters, and now the challenge is arranging them correctly.

Guess 4: CRIMP. All green. Solved in four.

Each guess served a clear purpose. The first eliminated five letters, the second found two, the third confirmed four, and the fourth locked them into the correct arrangement.

Where to Play Wordle

The official game lives at nytimes.com/games/wordle. It is free in any browser, on desktop or mobile, and requires no download or account.

The New York Times Games app (available on iOS and Android) also includes Wordle alongside Spelling Bee, Connections, and the Crossword. Wordle remains free within the app even without a Games subscription.

Avoid third-party Wordle clones in app stores. They are not affiliated with The New York Times and frequently contain ads, trackers, or inaccurate word lists that can make the game behave differently than the real version.

Hard Mode Explained

Hard mode adds one constraint: any letter confirmed green or yellow must appear in all future guesses. Green letters stay locked in their position, and yellow letters must be included somewhere in the word.

You can toggle hard mode on or off via the gear icon, but only before making any guesses on the current puzzle.

This removes the ability to make exploratory guesses that test new letters without reusing confirmed ones. Every guess must incorporate all known information, which limits your options and can create situations where several valid words fit the same pattern with no way to distinguish between them. Hard mode solves show an asterisk on the share grid.

Tips for Absolute Beginners

Start with common letters. Words like SLATE, CRANE, and TRACE are strong first guesses because they test the most frequently appearing letters in Wordle answers. For a full ranking with the data behind each word, see the Best Starting Words guide.

Grey tiles are more valuable than they seem. After two guesses that both come back all grey, you have eliminated ten letters, leaving only 16 possibilities per position. That is enormous progress even though it might not feel like it.

Move yellow letters to new positions. A common early mistake is leaving a yellow letter in the same spot across multiple guesses. Yellow means right letter, wrong position, so it needs to go somewhere else.

Never reuse grey letters. Once a letter turns grey, it is confirmed absent from the answer. Including it in a future guess wastes a slot that could test something new.

Learn to recognize word patterns. Common endings like -IGHT, -ATCH, -OUND, and -ANCE appear frequently in Wordle answers. Spotting these fragments early helps you jump ahead to a small group of candidates instead of building the word from scratch. For deeper tactics on using patterns and tile feedback, see the Wordle Strategy Guide.

Take your time. There is no timer. Think through the remaining possibilities before committing to a guess.