How does Wordle handle double letters?

Each letter in the answer can light up one letter in your guess. Greens are given out first; then each copy left over turns one more guess letter yellow, left to right. Guess LEVEL when the answer is HOTEL and only the second E and L light up, both green. The first E and L are gray, though HOTEL has both.

Can a gray letter still be in the word?

Yes, when you typed it more times than the answer has it. A gray copy then means the answer has exactly as many of that letter as your row lit up, green or yellow. A letter that's gray everywhere in your row isn't in the answer at all.

What is the best Wordle starting word?

It depends on the word list and the goal. Scored by expected information over this page's 1,000 common words, TRACE beats every other word in the list, at 6.03 bits. The Times' WordleBot solved its 2,309 answers in the fewest guesses opening with CRANE, or DEALT in hard mode, in 2022, and 3Blue1Brown landed on SALET. Of the nine openers on the stage, the top five sit within 0.15 bits.

How does WordleBot work?

The Times' WordleBot grades a finished game. As its makers described it in 2022, at each turn it picks the word that solves the game in the fewest steps, treating every remaining answer as equally likely, and it scores your luck and skill from 0 to 99. The solver on this page is simpler: it takes the guess with the most expected information, one turn at a time.

Is ADIEU a good first guess?

It's weaker than it feels. Four vowels sound efficient, but on this page's list ADIEU is worth 4.82 bits to TRACE's 6.03, and the solver then takes four guesses to reach MATCH instead of three. Try Open with ADIEU on the second stage.

Live model · Wordle

How Wordle Actually Works

Wordle colors a guess in two passes. First, every letter in the right spot turns green. Then the answer's leftover letters are counted, and each other guess letter turns yellow if a copy is left, using it up, or gray if not. So a letter you type twice lights up only as often as the answer has it.

Coloring one guess, pass by pass

The answer is HOTEL; the guess is LEVEL. Wordle colors a guess in two passes: greens first, then yellows from the answer letters left over.

StopColoring a guess

AnswerGuess

CH1 Yellow: in the answer, another spot

Watch the Python behind this model run, line by line

How to read the stage

The stage shows the guess, LEVEL, and the answer, HOTEL. The green pass checks spot by spot: the second E and the second L match, so they go green and use up the only E and L in HOTEL. The counter then holds what's left over: H, O and T. In the yellow pass, the first L and E find no copy left, so they're gray, though HOTEL has both letters. Try One letter, three colors under Break it.

How a solver picks a guess

Every guess splits the possible answers into groups by the colors it would show, up to 3^5 = 243 groups. The stage below scores a guess by its expected information, in bits: how many times, on average, it halves the list. On this page's 1,000 words, TRACE scores 6.03 bits, splitting them into 130 groups whose biggest, all gray, holds 63 words. ADIEU scores 4.82 and AUDIO 4.44: their groups are fewer and bigger.

A solver that plays for information

The solver's list is the 1,000 most common five-letter words, each treated as equally likely to be the answer. Each turn it plays the guess expected to tell it the most.

StopExpected information

AnswerFirst guess

Colors	Words	Some of them
(none)

CH1 Yellow: in the answer, another spot

Why the best guess can be one that can't win

Against MATCH, TRACE leaves six words: BATCH, CATCH, HATCH, MATCH, PATCH and WATCH. Guess them one at a time and each wrong one rules out only itself, so it could take six more turns, one past Wordle's limit. The solver guesses CLIMB instead, which can't be the answer. It splits the six four ways, MATCH alone in its group, and the next guess wins. The Times explained WordleBot with the same move: BLIMP, for five -ATCH words.

What the model leaves out

The Times counted 2,309 possible answers in 2022, out of roughly 13,000 valid five-letter words; this list is 1,000 common words, each treated as equally likely. The solver looks one guess ahead and scores nine famous openers on turn one, not every word. WordleBot plans for the fewest guesses overall, and 3Blue1Brown's solver also weighs how common a word is. Hard mode, where revealed hints must be used, isn't modeled, and the first stage colors any five letters.

Questions

How does Wordle handle double letters?: Each letter in the answer can light up one letter in your guess. Greens are given out first; then each copy left over turns one more guess letter yellow, left to right. Guess LEVEL when the answer is HOTEL and only the second E and L light up, both green. The first E and L are gray, though HOTEL has both.
Can a gray letter still be in the word?: Yes, when you typed it more times than the answer has it. A gray copy then means the answer has exactly as many of that letter as your row lit up, green or yellow. A letter that's gray everywhere in your row isn't in the answer at all.
What is the best Wordle starting word?: It depends on the word list and the goal. Scored by expected information over this page's 1,000 common words, TRACE beats every other word in the list, at 6.03 bits. The Times' WordleBot solved its 2,309 answers in the fewest guesses opening with CRANE, or DEALT in hard mode, in 2022, and 3Blue1Brown landed on SALET. Of the nine openers on the stage, the top five sit within 0.15 bits.
How does WordleBot work?: The Times' WordleBot grades a finished game. As its makers described it in 2022, at each turn it picks the word that solves the game in the fewest steps, treating every remaining answer as equally likely, and it scores your luck and skill from 0 to 99. The solver on this page is simpler: it takes the guess with the most expected information, one turn at a time.
Is ADIEU a good first guess?: It's weaker than it feels. Four vowels sound efficient, but on this page's list ADIEU is worth 4.82 bits to TRACE's 6.03, and the solver then takes four guesses to reach MATCH instead of three. Try Open with ADIEU on the second stage.

Drill the mechanism

The yellow pass is a counter keyed by letter: count the answer's leftover letters, then spend them as the guess asks. Valid Anagram is the same counter, filled by one word and emptied by the other, and Group Anagrams files words under the letters they count.