Wordle

Wordle is the daily five-letter word game published by The New York Times. Created by Josh Wardle and acquired by the Times in 2022, it gives every player the same hidden word each day and six guesses to find it. Each guess must be a valid five-letter word; once entered, the tiles turn green, yellow or grey to show which letters are in the word and whether they sit in the right spot, and the on-screen keyboard keeps the same colours so you can see what you have already tried. A new puzzle is released at midnight in your time zone, and the daily words are curated by the Times editors using the Oxford Dictionary. The daily puzzle needs no subscription and no account, though a free account links your statistics across devices. The colour grid you can copy after solving is what made Wordle the reference of the genre: the same puzzle for everyone, a fixed guess budget, and a shareable result that gives nothing away.

1. Open the day's Wordle on the web, in the Games app or in the News app; the daily puzzle needs no subscription.
2. Type any valid five-letter word into the top row and press Enter to submit it.
3. Read the tiles: green means the letter is in the word and in the correct spot, yellow means it is in the word but in the wrong spot, grey means it is not in the word.
4. Use that feedback, mirrored on the on-screen keyboard, to choose your next word.
5. Find the word within six guesses; the round ends when you solve it, when the sixth guess fails, or when the next daily Wordle arrives at midnight.
6. Open the statistics panel to check your streak, and press Share to copy your colour grid.

Wordle suits anyone who wants one short word deduction a day with a hard stop: six guesses, one answer, and nothing to grind afterwards unless you pay for the archive. It rewards players who like reading colour feedback and spending a small budget of guesses well, and it works as a shared ritual because everyone gets the same word. Skip it if you want to play several puzzles a day without a Games subscription, or if a strict daily limit frustrates you rather than motivating you. A puzzle of at most six guesses takes a few minutes, and the streak only counts if you finish before midnight local time.

After you press Enter, each tile in the row turns green when the letter is in the word and in the correct spot, yellow when it is in the word but in the wrong spot, and grey when it is not in the word at all. The on-screen keyboard takes the same colours, so each key shows its best known state, and High Contrast Mode swaps green and yellow for orange and blue. Solving turns the final row fully green. Afterwards, Share copies a text result: the puzzle number and your score out of six above a grid of coloured squares, one row per guess, no letters.

Daily puzzle

One numbered five-letter word a day, the same for everyone, released at midnight in your time zone. Playable free on the web, in the Games app and in the News app, with no account required.

Hard Mode

A setting behind the cog icon: any revealed hints must be used in subsequent guesses. It can only be enabled at the start of a round, and a shared result carries an asterisk after the score when it is on.

WordleBot

An analysis tool for New York Times Games, All Access and Home Delivery subscribers. It takes your completed Wordle and tells you how skilful or lucky you were, the end screen links to it, and a Beat the Bot badge rewards solving in fewer steps than the standard bot.

Wordle Archive

Every past Wordle back to June 19, 2021, for New York Times Games and All Access subscribers, with All Access included in Home Delivery. Archive games count towards Played, Win % and Guess Distribution but never towards streaks, and a completed puzzle cannot be replayed.

Create Your Wordle Puzzle

Subscribers can build a custom Wordle of four to seven letters with an optional hint and share it by link. Anyone can solve a custom puzzle, subscriber or not, on the web or in the Games app.

• Open with a word that tests several distinct common letters rather than a favourite: the first row is there to gather information, not to win.
• Treat green and yellow as different facts. Green fixes a letter in its place; yellow only proves it is in the word, so move a yellow letter to a new position on the next guess.
• Tiles report letters, not counts. A green or yellow tile confirms the letter is in the word and only a grey tile rules it out, so a doubled letter stays possible until the tiles say otherwise.
• Every guess must be a valid five-letter word, so an eliminating probe still has to be a real word; plan probes that recycle no grey letters.
• Hard Mode forces every revealed hint into your later guesses and can only be switched on at the start of a round, so set it before the first word if you want the extra constraint.
• Solve before midnight in your time zone: a puzzle finished after the day rolls over breaks the streak, and archive games never count towards it.