How to Play Wordle: A Beginner’s Guide to the Rules and Colors
Learn how to play Wordle, understand the green, yellow, and gray tiles, use your six guesses wisely, and solve the daily five-letter puzzle with confidence.
Table of Contents
You get six guesses. One hidden word. Five letters. That’s Wordle.
If you’ve never played, don’t worry. It takes about two minutes to learn and a lifetime to get good at. Here’s everything you need, from the basic rules to the exact meaning of each tile color.
What Is Wordle, Exactly?
Wordle is a word-guessing game. Every player gets the same puzzle each day. You type a five-letter word, hit enter, and the tiles change color to show how close you got.
Josh Wardle built the game for his partner, who loves word puzzles. He released the game to the public in October 2021. Within a few months, it went from 90 daily players to more than two million. The New York Times bought it in January 2022, and it’s lived there ever since.
One reason it caught on so fast: the results are easy to share, but the answer stays hidden. You post your little grid of green, yellow, and gray squares, and your friends see how many guesses you needed without you giving away the word.
That’s a clever bit of design, and it turned into a daily ritual for millions of people.
You don’t need an account to play. But if you want your stats saved across devices, signing in helps.
The Rules, in Plain Terms
There’s a five-letter word hidden somewhere. You get six chances to find it.
Every guess has to be a real word the game recognizes. You can’t type random letters and hope for the best; the game will reject anything that isn’t in its dictionary.
After each guess, the tiles light up. Green, yellow, or gray. Read what they tell you before you type your next word. That’s the whole game, really. Guess, read the colors, guess again, smarter this time.
Six Guesses
You have six attempts to identify the hidden five-letter word.
Five Letters
Every answer and every valid guess contains five letters.
Valid Words Only
The game checks your guess against its dictionary and rejects words it doesn’t recognize.
One Daily Puzzle
Everyone gets the same daily puzzle, making results easy to compare and share.
What the Colors Actually Mean
This part trips up new players, so let’s go slow. Every colored tile gives you information about the letter you just guessed.
Green = Correct
The letter is correct and sitting in the right spot. Leave it there. Don’t move it on future guesses.
Yellow = Wrong Spot
The letter is in the word, but not where you placed it. Move that letter to another position on your next guesses.
Gray = Not Available
The letter usually isn’t in the word. With repeated letters, however, a gray tile can mean there isn’t another copy.
Green Tiles
Green means the letter is correct, and it’s sitting in the right spot. Leave it there. Don’t move it on future guesses.
Yellow Tiles
Yellow means the letter is in the word, but not where you put it. If you guess a word with A in the second spot and it turns yellow, the answer has an A somewhere — just not in spot two.
Try spot one, three, four, or five instead. A lot of beginners leave the yellow letter right where it was on the next guess. Don’t do that. You’re throwing away a clue.
Gray Tiles and Repeated Letters
Gray usually means the letter isn’t in the word at all. Simple enough. But there’s a wrinkle worth knowing.
Say the answer has one E, but your guess has two E’s. Wordle might color one of them and leave the other gray. That gray tile isn’t telling you “no E.” It’s telling you “no second E.”
The first one, wherever it landed, is still correct information. This only comes up with repeated letters, but it trips people up constantly. Watch for it.
A Real Game, Step by Step
Let’s walk through a full game. Say the hidden word is CRIMP.
SLATE
Every letter comes back gray. S, L, A, T, E — none of them. That feels bad, but it isn’t. You just crossed five common letters off the list in one move. That’s real progress, even without a single colored tile.
GRIND
G comes back gray. R turns yellow. I turns yellow. N and D come back gray. Now you know: R and I are both in the word, just not where you guessed. Three more letters ruled out, two confirmed.
PRICK
P turns yellow. R turns yellow again. I turns yellow again. C turns yellow. K comes back gray. Four yellow tiles at once. P, R, I, and C are all hiding in the answer somewhere.
CRIMP
All five tiles turn green. Solved, in four guesses.
What This Game Teaches You
The first guess cleared five letters off the board. The second confirmed two letters exist. The third confirmed two more and hinted you were close. The fourth put everything in its place. That’s exactly why every guess should be used to gather useful information.
Where to Actually Play Wordle
The real game lives at nytimes.com/games/wordle. It’s free, works in any browser, and needs no download.
Play the Official Game
You can play Wordle through The New York Times Games website. There’s also a New York Times Games app for iPhone and Android, where Wordle appears alongside Connections, Spelling Bee, and the Crossword.
Wordle itself stays free in the app, even if you don’t pay for a Games subscription.
What Hard Mode Changes
Hard Mode adds one rule. Once a letter turns green or yellow, every future guess has to use it.
Green Letters Stay Locked
Green letters have to remain in their exact confirmed position in every future guess.
Yellow Letters Must Return
Yellow letters must appear somewhere in your next guess, even though you still need to find their correct position.
You can turn Hard Mode on through the gear icon, but only before your first guess of the day. Once you’ve started, it’s locked in for that puzzle.
This one rule changes how you play. Normally, you might throw in a guess just to test five new letters, even if it ignores what you already know. Hard Mode won’t let you do that.
Every guess has to build on the last one. Sometimes that leaves you stuck: several words fit your known pattern, and you have no easy way to tell them apart.
Tips That Actually Help Beginners
You don’t need advanced strategy to get better at Wordle. A few simple habits can make your guesses much more useful.
Start With Common Letters
Words like SLATE, CRANE, and TRACE test letters that show up frequently in Wordle answers.
Don’t Underrate Gray Tiles
An all-gray guess still rules out five letters. That’s useful information even when you don’t see a single green or yellow.
Move Your Yellow Letters
Yellow means the letter belongs in the word, just not in that position. Move it somewhere new instead of repeating the same placement.
Leave Gray Letters Out
Once a letter is confirmed absent, don’t keep using it in later guesses unless you’re dealing with the repeated-letter situation.
Watch Common Word Endings
Patterns such as -IGHT, -ATCH, -OUND, and -ANCE can narrow your choices quickly once you spot them.
Slow Down
There’s no clock running. Take a minute, think through what fits, and make each guess count.
Beginner Strategy
Don’t focus only on getting green tiles. Your goal is to collect information. Every useful gray, yellow, and green tile should make your next guess smarter than the last.
Quick Answers
How many guesses do I get in Wordle?
Six. Miss on all six, and the game reveals the answer.
What does a gray tile mean if my guess has two of the same letter?
It usually means that specific letter, or the extra copy of it, isn’t in the word. If one copy already turned green or yellow, the gray one is telling you there isn’t a second copy.
Can I change the answer’s difficulty?
Not directly, but turning on Hard Mode makes each guess stricter, since you’re forced to reuse every letter you’ve already confirmed.
Is Wordle free?
Yes, both on the website and inside the New York Times Games app. No subscription is needed to play Wordle.
Does everyone get the same word each day?
Yes. That’s what makes the daily share grid work. Everyone is comparing results on the exact same puzzle.
Ready to Play Wordle?
Wordle is simple once you understand what the colors are telling you. You have six guesses, five letters to work with, and a new puzzle each day.
Start with a useful word, pay close attention to every green and yellow tile, and don’t waste future guesses on letters you’ve already ruled out.
You don’t need to solve every puzzle in three guesses to be good at Wordle. The key is to make every guess teach you something. Once you start reading the colors correctly, the game becomes much easier — and a lot more fun.