How to play Wordle
Wordle is a daily word game from The New York Times: guess the hidden five-letter word in six tries or fewer. One puzzle per day, the same word for every player on Earth. Here's everything a beginner needs.
The rules in 60 seconds
- 1
Guess any real five-letter word. Type it and press enter. It must be in Wordle's dictionary — random letter strings are rejected.
- 2
Read the colors. Each tile flips to tell you about that letter (examples below).
- 3
Use logic to solve it within six guesses. Every guess should exploit what the colors told you.
What the tile colors mean
Green: S is in the word and in exactly the right spot.
Yellow: R is in the word, but not in that position — try it somewhere else.
Grey: N is not in the word at all. Don't guess it again.
One subtlety with repeated letters: if you guess a word with two E's and the answer has only one, only one of your E tiles can turn green or yellow — the second flips grey even though E is in the word.
Hard mode
In the settings gear you can enable hard mode, which requires every guess to reuse the hints you've earned: greens stay fixed in their slots and yellows must appear in the next guess. It prevents "sacrifice" guesses that probe five fresh letters, so boards with many lookalike answers (-IGHT words like LIGHT, NIGHT, FIGHT) become genuinely dangerous. Your stats display shows a small asterisk when a win was earned in hard mode.
Streaks and stats
Wordle tracks your games played, win percentage, current streak, and max streak in the browser or app you're signed into. A streak counts consecutive days with a win — miss a day or fail a puzzle and it resets to zero. Signing into a free NYT account syncs stats across devices; playing logged-out ties them to a single browser, and clearing cookies can wipe them.
Where to play officially
Play the official game free atnytimes.com/games/wordleor in the NYT Games app. A new puzzle arrives at midnight in your local timezone. If you're stuck on today's word, we publish spoiler-free hints every day — and if you want to sharpen your game, start with ourdata-ranked starting words andstrategy tips.
Frequently asked questions
Is Wordle free to play?
Yes. Wordle is completely free on the New York Times website and in the NYT Games app — no subscription is required for the daily puzzle itself, though the NYT sells subscriptions for its wider games library and archives.
How many guesses do you get in Wordle?
Six. Each guess must be a real five-letter word, and after each one the tiles flip green, yellow, or grey to show how close you are. Solve it within six rows and your streak continues.
What is hard mode in Wordle?
Hard mode is an optional setting that forces every subsequent guess to reuse all revealed hints: green letters must stay in their slots and yellow letters must appear somewhere in the next guess. It makes the game stricter, not harder in terms of the word list.
Can I play past Wordle puzzles?
The official game offers one puzzle per day. NYT Games subscribers get access to a full archive of past puzzles; otherwise you can browse every historical answer — though not play them interactively — in our archive.