How to Play Wordle (and What the Colours Really Tell You)

Wordle is a single-player word puzzle: find the hidden five-letter word in six guesses. Each guess must be a five-letter word, and the colours after each turn tell you which letters are right, misplaced, or absent.

The basic Wordle rules are small enough to learn in one game, but the colour feedback carries more detail than it first appears to. Green does not mean “good letter” in a vague sense. It means this exact letter belongs in this exact square. Yellow is useful, but it also bans that letter from the square where you just put it. Grey looks simple until repeated letters get involved.

If you are searching for how to play Wordle because you have seen rows of coloured squares shared online, the shape is this: six rows, five columns, one hidden answer, no points total, and a result measured by whether you solved it and how many guesses it took. The wordle colours meaning is the heart of the game. Read them correctly and the puzzle becomes deduction, not luck.

What are you actually trying to do in Wordle?

You are trying to identify one hidden five-letter word. Wordle is played by 1 player against the puzzle, not against an opponent, and there is no deck, hand, board piece, timer, or betting system. The whole game sits inside a 6-by-5 grid.

Each row is one guess. You type a five-letter word, submit it, and the game colours the five squares in that row. Those colours are the only clues you get. They tell you which letters are correct, which letters appear somewhere else, and which letters are not in the answer, with one important exception for repeated letters.

The aim is not to score the most points. Wordle has no points total. A result is usually expressed as the number of the row where you solved it, such as 3/6 or 5/6. If you do not find the answer by the end of the sixth row, the puzzle is lost.

Good play means turning each row into evidence. A first guess gives you broad information. The next guesses test positions, rule out letters, and gradually leave fewer possible words. You win by entering the exact answer, with all 5 letters in the right order.

What does the grid look like before the first guess?

Before the first guess, the Wordle grid is empty: 6 rows high and 5 columns wide. The 5 columns matter because every guess must have exactly 5 letters. The 6 rows matter because you only have 6 submitted guesses before the game ends.

The first row is where your opening word goes. Nothing is revealed in advance. There is no clue, definition, category, first letter, or list of possible answers. You start with a blank grid and your own choice of a valid five-letter word.

The answer is a single ordinary word, not a phrase. Repeated letters are allowed, so a word can contain the same letter more than once. That matters later, because the colours count letters carefully rather than treating every copy of a letter as automatically useful.

Think of the blank grid as space for a short investigation. Row 1 asks a broad question: which of these letters are involved? Row 2 can test a new position or a new set of letters. By Row 4 or Row 5, you are often checking fine details, such as whether a word ends in Y or whether a repeated E is actually present.

Nothing on the empty board tells you the answer. The first useful information arrives only after you submit a guess.

What happens on a turn, step by step?

1. Choose a five-letter word. A turn begins with a full word, not one letter at a time. Your opening word should be a real word because the game uses the whole guess to produce feedback.
2. Type the word into the active row. The letters fill the 5 squares from left to right. If you change your mind before submitting, you can remove letters and choose another word. That has not used a guess yet.
3. Submit the guess. A submitted row is a turn. If the word is not accepted as a valid five-letter word, it does not give colour feedback and should not count as one of the 6 guesses. Use another word.
4. Read the colours square by square. Each letter is judged against the hidden answer. A green square confirms a letter and its position. A yellow square confirms the letter but rejects that position. A grey square usually rules the letter out, subject to repeated-letter rules.
5. Use the evidence for the next row. Keep green letters fixed. Move yellow letters to different positions. Avoid grey letters unless you have a specific reason connected to duplicates.
6. Repeat until the game ends. The game ends as soon as you enter the exact hidden word, or after your sixth submitted guess if you have not solved it. The win condition is exact: all 5 letters must match in order.

What do the colours really mean?

The wordle colours meaning is precise. The colours do not rate the quality of your guess. They compare each letter in your guess with the hidden answer and, crucially, with the number of times that letter appears.

Duplicates are where many new players misread the board. Suppose the answer were APPLE and your guess were ALLEY. The A would be green. One L could be yellow because L is in the answer but elsewhere. The second L would be grey because the answer contains only 1 L. The E would be yellow because it belongs in the final position, not the fourth. The Y would be grey.

Green information is strongest because it fixes a square. Yellow information is next: it proves the letter exists while closing one position. Grey information is powerful too, but only after you check whether the letter appeared elsewhere in the same guess as green or yellow.

What counts as a win, and why keep playing?

A win in Wordle is entering the hidden five-letter word exactly before the 6 guesses are gone. The order matters. If the answer is CRANE, then C, R, A, N, and E all have to be in those positions in the same submitted row. Four green letters and one wrong square is not a win.

The game ends immediately when you solve it. If you use all 6 rows without finding the answer, the game is over and the answer has beaten you. There is no partial score based on how close you were. The meaningful result is win or loss, plus the guess number if you won.

That simple scoring is part of the appeal. A 2/6 feels sharp because you found the answer quickly. A 6/6 can feel better because you escaped after being boxed in. A loss still teaches you something, especially if you spent too long ignoring a yellow letter or trusted a grey duplicate too early.

Wordle stays worth playing because the rules are tiny but the decisions are not. You choose between information and commitment on almost every row. Do you test 5 fresh letters, or chase the word you nearly see? Do you protect a possible answer, or sacrifice it to learn more? That tension fits neatly inside 6 guesses.

Frequently asked questions

Final thoughts

A good Wordle habit is to slow down after the colours appear. The typing is easy; the reading is the game. Before you enter the next word, say out loud what you know: this letter is fixed, this one cannot go here, these letters are dead, and this grey might only be grey because I guessed too many copies.

Do not worship an opening word. A strong starter is useful, but the second guess is where many games are won or made awkward. If your first row gives you 2 yellows, the job is not to admire them. Move them. If it gives you 4 greys, be pleased. You have cut away a lot of bad paths.

The best games have a small moment of nerve. You can see 2 possible answers and only 1 row left. You choose. Sometimes you are wrong. That is fine. The next puzzle takes none of your dignity with it.

Play for clean thinking rather than streaks. Wordle rewards attention to exact language: position, count, order, exclusion. Few games make a single grey square feel so useful.