Unwinding Wordle: Tips and Tricks

Wordle has captivated millions of players since it started gaining popularity at the end of 2021. While the game’s strategy seems straightforward, Wordle has a devoted community of daily solvers who have spent years developing techniques to improve their solve. No matter your reasons for solving, a little knowledge goes a long way when you’re trying to get better, so I, Isaac Aronow, an editor on the Games team, reached out to the game’s editor as well as some of its most dedicated fans for their best advice.

Remember the rules

Before we get too deep into the steps you can take to improve, it helps to remember the basics. You get six guesses to find the day’s five letter word. A yellow square means the letter is in the word, but not in the right spot. A green square means the letter is in the word and in the correct spot. A gray square means the letter is not in the word. I’ve also found that it helps to think about what the answer won’t be: plurals that end in S, nearly all verbs that end with -ED and any vulgar or obscene words. You can still guess these words to help yourself find letters, but they’ll never be the answer.

Wordle doesn’t have a difficulty curve throughout the course of the week like the daily crossword puzzle, but Tracy Bennett, Wordle’s editor, is always thinking about how tricky her word choices are. She said that she considers herself a steward of Josh Wardle’s original list, though she adds or removes a few words every month, adding that the game “wasn’t originally conceived as a game tens of millions of people would play,” and that the word list needed a bit of adjusting after The New York Times acquired it in 2022. The difficulty of each word is tested by a panel and adjustments to timing or content are made with their feedback in mind.

For an added challenge, solvers also have the option to play in hard mode, where you must use the letters you have already discovered in your subsequent guesses.

While everything in this guide might be a lot to take in all at once, breaking everything into parts and setting goals for yourself will help you set yourself up for future success. Maybe you want to build a long streak, maybe you want to solve in fewer average guesses, or maybe there’s another goal you have. Focus on the information you think will be more helpful to you in reaching your goal, then make sure you solve with that goal in mind.