Wordle looks almost too simple: five letters, six tries, three colors. But underneath that minimal surface is a precise set of rules — and once you understand exactly how the game thinks, your guesses stop being luck and start being logic.
This guide explains the rules exactly as our daily puzzle on the homepage implements them — no timer, no ads, no sign-up — and then covers the strategy that experienced players use to win in three or four guesses. If you want the big picture first, start with our pillar guide, the benefits of playing Wordle every day.
The rules in one paragraph
Every calendar day there is one five-letter answer word. You have six guesses. Each guess must be a real five-letter word from the game’s dictionary. After every guess, each tile turns a color: green means the right letter in the right position, yellow means the letter exists in the word but belongs somewhere else, and gray means the letter does not appear in the word at all. Solve it before your sixth guess runs out and you win; run out and the answer is revealed — and a fresh word arrives tomorrow.
Step by step: your first game
1. Type any five-letter word
Click the on-screen keyboard or just type on your physical keyboard — both work. The word must be five letters; the game tells you how many letters you still need if you press ENTER too early.
2. The guess must be in the dictionary
You cannot submit letter soup. If a guess is not a recognized word, the game refuses it with a message — “Not in this demo’s word list. Try another common word.” This is deliberate: it stops players from brute-forcing the puzzle with nonsense strings. How the word list works (and why a real word sometimes gets rejected) is covered in our word-list guide.
3. Read the colors
Each of the five tiles gets its own verdict, independently:
- Green — right letter, right spot. Keep it there forever.
- Yellow — right letter, wrong spot. Try it somewhere else.
- Gray — no match. Cross this letter off your mental list.
One subtlety beginners miss: colors apply to copies of letters, not letters in general. If the answer has only one “S” and your guess has two, you will get at most one colored “S”. The full logic is explained in our repeated-letters guide.
4. Use the keyboard as your notebook
The on-screen keyboard keeps score for you: every letter you have used stays tinted with its best result across all your guesses. Green means keep using it, yellow means reposition it, gray means stop typing it. On desktop, the same feedback colors appear whether you use the mouse or the physical keyboard.
5. Win, learn, or wait for tomorrow
Find the word within six guesses and the game congratulates you with the number of guesses used. If the sixth guess misses, the answer is revealed in the status line. Your progress and a running tally of games played and won are stored locally in your own browser — nothing is uploaded, and there is no account.
6. The “Start over” button
Want to replay today’s puzzle — maybe you fumbled the opening or you are testing a new opener? The Start over button clears today’s grid and deals the same word again. It is the cleanest practice loop in the game, and it is the honest way to “play more than once” while keeping the classic one-puzzle-a-day spirit. More practice ideas live in our Wordle Unlimited guide.
Strategy: how good players actually think
Openers are about information, not luck
Your first guess cannot be “right” — but it can be more or less useful. A strong opener tests five different, common letters, ideally mixing the most frequent vowels (E, A, O) with workhorse consonants (R, S, T, L, N). Every letter it colors is a constraint on the answer; every gray tile eliminates a chunk of the dictionary. We rank and explain the best openers in Best starter words — and the letter-frequency logic behind them.
Guess two should split the possibilities
After your opener, resist the urge to guess the first plausible word that comes to mind. Look at what has been proven: which greens are locked, which yellows must move, which letters are dead. Then choose a guess that answers the biggest open question — often a word that tests several untested common letters at once, even if it cannot possibly be the answer. Professional solvers call these “burner” guesses, and they win far more games than hopeful stabs.
Position is information too
Yellow tiles tell you more than “the letter is in the word” — they tell you where it is not. A yellow “R” in position two means R exists but not there. Track these exclusions: they are why an “R” you already know is in the word can still be worth placing somewhere new.
Leave room for repeated letters
Answers like SWEET or BLOOM contain the same letter twice. One gray copy of a letter does not kill every copy — and one yellow copy does not guarantee a second one exists. When several words fit your clues and one of them has a double letter, the double is often the smarter guess. The complete rules and worked examples are in the repeated-letters guide.
Manage the guess economy
Six guesses sounds like a lot until you spend three of them on letters you could have tested in one. The rhythm experienced players aim for: guesses one and two gather information, guesses three and four narrow the field, guesses five and six finish the job. If you are guessing the answer on turn two, you are gambling; if you are still exploring on turn five, you were too timid earlier.
Frequently asked rules questions
Can I guess the same word twice?
Yes — the game will not reject a repeated guess, though it would be a wasted turn.
Do plurals work?
If a plural is in the dictionary, it is accepted as a guess; it is simply rarely the answer. The same goes for past-tense verbs. Remember: a word can be a legal guess and still never be the answer.
Does the daily word change at midnight my time?
Yes. Our puzzle selects its word from the calendar date on your device, so a new challenge is waiting after midnight local time — no refresh gymnastics required.
Is there a timer?
No. There is never a timer on this site. The puzzle waits as long as you do — that calm is a feature, and it is one of the top reasons players say they keep the habit (see the benefits guide).
Now put it into practice
The rules take two minutes to learn; the logic takes a few days of daily play. Open today’s puzzle, try the opener you like best from the starter-words guide, and pay attention to what each color proves rather than what you hope it means. After a week, look back: you will find most of your losses came from a rule on this page — and most of your wins from guessing what the board told you.