How to Play Wordle: Rules, Colors, and Beginner Tips

Wordle asks you to identify a five-letter word in six accepted guesses. After each guess, every tile changes color to describe how that letter relates to the answer.

When you are comfortable with the rules, compare starting-word approaches, read the strategy guide, or use the daily hints page for the current puzzle.

The basic rules

1. Enter an accepted five-letter word.
2. Read the color feedback for all five positions.
3. Use that information in the next guess.
4. Solve the word within six attempts.

What the colors mean

• Green: the letter is in the answer and in this exact position.
• Yellow: the letter is in the answer but not in this position.
• Gray: the answer has no unmatched copy of this letter.

That wording for gray matters when a guess repeats a letter. For example, if a guess contains two copies and only one is colored, the answer can contain one copy rather than zero.

Three beginner habits

• Start with five distinct letters so the first row tests broad territory.
• Keep green letters fixed and move yellow letters to positions not yet ruled out.
• Before submitting, check the guess against every previous tile, including repeated-letter counts.

Wordle has a Normal Mode and a Hard Mode. Hard Mode requires you to use revealed green and yellow clues in later guesses, while Normal Mode permits a diagnostic guess that may only be intended to test alternatives.

How duplicate-letter feedback is scored

Read greens first. Exact matches consume one copy of that letter in the answer. Then read the remaining letters from left to right: a tile turns yellow only if an unmatched copy remains. Any later duplicate is gray when the answer has no copy left to assign.

For example, imagine a guess contains two E tiles but the answer contains one E. If one E is green, the other must be gray unless the answer contains another E elsewhere. The gray tile limits the count; it does not cancel the green one. This is why treating gray as a simple “letter absent” flag creates mistakes.

A paper-friendly way to track counts

Keep a minimum and maximum count for letters that appear more than once in a guess. Every green or yellow copy raises the known minimum. A gray copy of that same letter caps the answer at the number of colored copies. This simple rule reproduces the important part of the game's duplicate logic without requiring a solver.

When should you guess a repeat?

Testing five distinct letters is efficient before you have evidence. Once the remaining pattern points toward words with a repeated letter, refusing to repeat becomes inefficient. Letter coverage is a tool, not a rule. The data below shows that repeated letters occur often enough in the site's answer model to deserve deliberate attention.

Using the solver without leaking constraints

Enter green letters in their exact positions. Add yellow letters as required letters, while keeping their rejected positions in mind. A gray letter that also appears green or yellow in the same row should be treated as a maximum-count clue. The site's solver can reproduce exact tile feedback when you compare a guess pattern, and the strategy guide explains when a diagnostic guess is worthwhile.