Word Guess - Free Daily-Style 5-Letter Word Game - Free Online

About the Word Guess

Word Guess is the five-letter deduction game everyone knows — guess the hidden word in six attempts. After each guess, every letter is colour-coded: green means it is in the word and in the right spot, yellow means it is in the word but somewhere else, and grey means it is not in the word at all. Use those clues to narrow down the answer letter by letter. Unlike the once-a-day version, here you can play as many words as you like, build a winning streak, and share your result grid. A brisk, satisfying test of vocabulary and logic.

How to play

Type any five-letter word and press Enter for your first guess.
Green tiles are correct and in place; yellow are in the word but misplaced.
Grey letters are not in the word — rule them out on your next try.
Crack the word within six guesses to win and extend your streak.

What it measures

This test focuses on your vocabulary, deductive reasoning and working memory. Solving in three or four guesses is a strong average; two is excellent and a one-guess win is pure luck. A good opening word that uses common letters is half the battle.

Why play it

Trains vocabulary recall and letter-pattern recognition
Every guess is a logic problem — deduce from green, yellow and grey
Short and replayable, with a streak to keep the daily habit going

Did you know?

The five-letter, six-guess format was popularised by a game a software engineer built for his partner in 2021, then given away free before going viral.
Its ancestor is the pen-and-paper game Jotto and the 1980s TV show Lingo, both built on the same guess-and-colour idea.
Starting words rich in common letters — vowels plus R, S, T, L, N — statistically reveal the most information.
There are over 12,000 valid five-letter words in English, but only a few thousand are common enough to be fair answers.

What counts as a good score?

No published norms exist for this format, so the ranges below are practical skill tiers rather than measured population data.

Level	Guesses needed	What it means
Learning	5–6 guesses	Solving, but usually spending early guesses on words that overlap letters you have already tested.
Average	4 guesses	Solid letter coverage and sensible use of position information.
Strong	3 guesses	Efficient information gathering — each guess is eliminating a large share of the remaining candidates.
Expert	2 guesses	Substantially luck as well as skill. Optimal play averages about 3.4, so consistent twos are not achievable.

Tiers describe performance on a five-letter, six-guess format. Solver research on the Wordle answer list shows optimal play averages around 3.4 guesses, which is a useful ceiling to measure against.

How to improve your word guess score

1.Open with vowel-heavy coverage

A strong first guess tests several common letters at once. Words like SLATE, CRANE and ADIEU are popular openers because they cover high-frequency letters efficiently.

2.Do not reuse dead letters

Every position spent on a letter you have already ruled out is wasted information. This is the most common avoidable mistake.

3.Guess to eliminate, not to win

With four guesses left, a word that cannot be the answer but splits the remaining candidates is often better than a long shot that might be.

4.Watch for doubled letters

Words like FLUFF and ABBEY defeat people who assume five distinct letters. If you are stuck with plenty of confirmed letters, suspect a repeat.

5.Use position, not just presence

A yellow letter tells you two things — the letter is in the word, and it is not in that position. Half of that information usually goes unused.

What optimal play actually looks like

Wordle's answer list is public, which made it an unusually clean optimisation problem. Analyses using information theory — treating each guess as maximising expected information gain, measured in bits — found that optimal play averages roughly 3.4 guesses and can guarantee a solve within five. Different solvers disagree slightly on the single best opener depending on whether they optimise for average case or worst case, with SALET, CRANE and TRACE all appearing in published results.

The gap between an average human at four guesses and an optimal solver at 3.4 is smaller than it looks, because the last fraction is dominated by positions where several candidate words remain and no guess can distinguish them all.

Frequently Asked

How do you play Word Guess?

Guess a five-letter word. Each tile turns green (right letter, right spot), yellow (right letter, wrong spot) or grey (not in the word). Use the feedback to refine your next guess, and try to find the secret word within six attempts.

What is the best word to start with?

Open with a real five-letter word packed with common letters — plenty of vowels plus frequent consonants like R, S, T, L and N. Words such as those uncover the most green and yellow tiles early, which narrows the answer fastest.

Can I play more than once a day?

Yes. This version gives you a fresh random word every game, so you can play as many rounds as you like. Win in a row to build your streak — your best streak is saved on your device.

What is the best starting word?

It depends on what you optimise for. Information-theoretic analyses commonly surface SALET, CRANE and TRACE near the top. The difference between any strong opener and the theoretical best is small — far smaller than the difference between a good opener and a poor one.

Is guessing a word that cannot be the answer a waste?

Often the opposite. When many candidates remain, a word that cannot win but splits the possibilities cleanly frequently beats a guess that might win but usually will not.

Word Guess - Free Daily-Style 5-Letter Word Game