How to Play Wordle — Complete Beginner's Guide (Rules, Tips & Tricks)

New to Wordle? This complete beginner's guide explains how to play Wordle, what the colour clues mean, the best strategies to win, and how to use tools to help.

Alex

July 5, 2024 · 6 min read

How to Play Wordle — Complete Beginner’s Guide

Wordle is the daily word puzzle that became a global obsession almost overnight. Every day, millions of players worldwide spend a few minutes trying to crack the same five-letter mystery word — and then share their colourful result grids on social media without spoiling the answer.

If you’re new to the game, this guide covers everything you need to know: the rules, how the colour system works, winning strategies, and how to use tools like a word solver when you’re stuck.

What Is Wordle?

Wordle is a free daily word puzzle created by Josh Wardle and now published by The New York Times. The game presents you with a blank grid and asks you to guess a secret five-letter English word. You have six attempts. After each guess, the letters change colour to tell you how close you are.

Only one puzzle is available each day, which resets at midnight. Everyone in the world plays the same word, which is a big part of what makes sharing results feel social and fun.

How to Play Wordle: Step by Step

Step 1: Go to the Wordle page

Visit the NYT Games site and open Wordle. You’ll see a 6×5 grid of blank tiles and a keyboard at the bottom.

Step 2: Type your first guess

Type any valid five-letter English word using your keyboard (or the on-screen keyboard). There are no hints on the first guess — you’re going in blind, so make it count. Choose a strong starting word (more on that below).

Press Enter to submit.

Step 3: Read the colour clues

After submitting, each letter in your guess turns one of three colours:

🟩 Green — The letter is in the word AND in the correct position. Don’t move it.
🟨 Yellow — The letter IS in the word but in the wrong position. It belongs somewhere else.
⬛ Grey — The letter is NOT in the word at all. Remove it from your thinking.

Step 4: Make your next guess using what you learned

Your second guess should use what the colours told you. Move yellow letters to a new position. Keep green letters in place. Avoid grey letters entirely.

Step 5: Repeat until you get it — or run out of tries

You have six guesses total. If you reveal the word, the grid fills with green and you win. If you don’t crack it in six, the answer is revealed.

Understanding the Colour System

The colour system is the entire heart of Wordle. Let’s walk through an example.

Secret word: PLANT

You guess: CRANE

C → ⬛ (no C in PLANT)
R → ⬛ (no R in PLANT)
A → 🟨 (A is in PLANT, but not in position 3)
N → 🟨 (N is in PLANT, but not in position 4)
E → ⬛ (no E in PLANT)

Now you know: A and N are in the word, but not in those positions. No C, R, or E.

Your next guess might be PLANT — or you might build toward it via SLANT, BLAND, or CLAMP to gather more information first.

Wordle Rules Worth Knowing

Every guess must be a valid five-letter English word. You can’t type random letters. If your word isn’t in the dictionary, you’ll get an error.
American English is used. If you’re used to British spellings (COLOUR vs COLOR, FLAVOUR vs FLAVOR), Wordle uses the American version.
The same letter can appear more than once. Words like ABBEY, LEVEL, and VIVID are fair game. If you guess a letter and it comes back grey, it might still appear elsewhere — just not as many times as you guessed it.
Hard Mode is optional. In Hard Mode, you must use revealed hints in every subsequent guess. Green letters must stay in place, and yellow letters must be reused. This makes the game more challenging and more logical.

7 Tips to Win at Wordle

1. Choose a strong opening word

Your first guess should cover as many common letters as possible. Great starting words include CRANE, SLATE, STARE, TRACE, and AUDIO. See our full guide to the best Wordle starting words.

2. Don’t repeat grey letters

This sounds obvious but is surprisingly easy to do under pressure. Once a letter goes grey, it’s not in the word. Cross it off mentally (or visually on the on-screen keyboard) and never guess it again.

3. Try to move yellow letters, not drop them

When a letter comes back yellow, it IS in the word — just not there. Your next guess should put it in a different position. Many players drop yellow letters entirely, which wastes valuable confirmed information.

4. Think about letter patterns, not just individual letters

If you have A and N confirmed as yellow, think about common patterns: -ANT, -AND, -ANE, -ANK, PLAN-, BRAN-, SCAN-. Patterns unlock possibilities faster than isolated letter thinking.

5. Don’t guess the answer on guess 2 unless you’re certain

Guess 2 is better used as an information-gathering play. Use your second guess to test new letters you haven’t yet confirmed, rather than firing a shot in the dark at the answer. Save your guesses 3–5 for genuine attempts.

6. Watch out for double letters

Wordle answers sometimes repeat a letter (VIVID, ABBEY, MIMIC). If you’ve tested most of the alphabet and still have grey letters in confusing positions, consider that a letter you’ve confirmed might appear twice.

7. Use a word solver when you’re stuck

There’s no shame in needing help. A word unscrambler or solver lets you input known green and yellow letters to find all possible valid words — helping you pick the most information-rich guess.

Try our free word solver →

After finishing a game, Wordle offers a Share button. Tapping it copies a text version of your result grid — using green, yellow, and black/white squares (no letters) — which you can paste into social media without spoiling the answer for anyone who hasn’t played yet.

A perfect game in two guesses looks like:

Wordle 1,234 2/6

⬛🟨⬛🟨⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Wordle Alternatives Worth Playing

Once you’ve finished your daily Wordle, there’s a whole ecosystem of similar games to explore:

Quordle — solve four Wordle puzzles simultaneously in nine guesses
NYT Connections — group 16 words into four hidden categories
NYT Spelling Bee — find as many words as possible from seven letters
Dordle — two Wordle puzzles at once, seven guesses
Heardle — guess a song from its opening notes

FAQ

Is Wordle free? Yes. Wordle is free to play on the NYT website. A free account is not required, though NYT Games subscribers can track their stats.

Can I play old Wordle puzzles? The official NYT game only shows the current day’s puzzle. To play past puzzles, third-party archive sites exist, though NYT has restricted some of these.

What happens if I type a word that isn’t valid? The row shakes and you get a “Not in word list” message. Try a different word.

Is there a Wordle app? Yes — Wordle is available through the NYT Games app on iOS and Android.