Wordle

Wordle is an everyday word-building game that you come across in your social media feed, online on your phone, and even in your favorite news app. The game has quickly grown to be one of the most beloved daily games for newsreaders, and its simplicity has kept the charm alive.

But if you’re playing Wordle for the first time and want to know how it came about to be the NYT’s flagship game, we’ve got you covered with all you need to know about it right here.

What is Wordle?

Wordle is a daily online word puzzle by The New York Times that challenges players to guess a five-letter word in a maximum of six attempts. The gameplay is simple, as it relies on a five-tile system across six rows, relying on colored tiles to guide players to the correct answer. If you’re wondering what’s the Wordle hint today, we’ve got you covered in our daily articles.

Wordle was created in 2021 by a software engineer in Brooklyn, New York, named Josh Wardle. The puzzle was meant to be a personal gift to his partner, who was fond of word games at the time. Initially, he was going to call the game Mr Bugs’ Wordy Nugz. After it went viral online for its simple and single daily puzzle structure, the New York Times Company caught wind of it who went after acquiring it.

Finally, on January 31, 2022, Wordle became property of the NYT for an undisclosed amount paid to Wardle, and since then, Tracy Bennett edits daily Wordles on the website. The game is now a key part of the NYT puzzles website and maintains its popularity.

Is Wordle Free?

Yes, Wordle is completely free to play on The New York Times website and app. To play it, no subscription or login is required.

Furthermore, the NYT offers other paid games separately on its platform that subscribers can gain access to.

Where to Play Wordle?

The only official place to play Wordle is on The New York Times website and app. You can access the official Wordle website for the daily puzzle via this page.

Since it is a web-based game, it can be played using a web browser on a desktop, mobile phone, or tablet. This means that you don’t need to download a separate app to play Wordle, apart from the official NYT app. So make sure to stay away from clones or any unofficial website like Wordle.com.

How Do You Play Wordle?

The basic goal of Wordle is that players have to guess a five-letter word in six attempts. The game requires your logic and deduction skills before you can guess the right word.

The Wordle grid is made up of six rows, each row containing five tiles to contain the word. You’ll need to type a valid five-letter English word into the first row and press Enter to proceed. Wordle only accepts real words from its dictionary.

After each guess, the tiles will instantly change color to give you feedback based on your guesses. There are three colors that the tiles change their color to:

• Green: When the letter is correct and in the right position
• Yellow: When the letter is correct but placed in the wrong position.
• Grey: When the letter is incorrect and does not exist in the correct answer.

Players need to use the information from the colors to inform their next word. You will need to continue this process until all five letters turn Green, which is when you’ll be declared the winner, or you use all six rows without finding the word, which is when you lose the entire game.

The best strategy for beginners at the puzzle is to select a strong starting word that uses the most common letters in the English language. This maximizes the info you get from your first guess and some crucial hints as to what the correct answer could be. Now that you know how to play Wordle, we surely hope you’ll be able to dive into a challenge when a new Wordle comes along.

Best Wordle Starting Words

Choosing your first word in a Wordle is of utmost importance as it can make or break your game in the puzzle. It is a vital strategic decision that can maximize your chances of guessing the answer in fewer guesses and finish the game early.

The best words are selected based on letter frequency (how often a letter appears) and vowel distribution (covering common vowels).

For example, a high-frequency word like SLATE is one of the best starting words since it uses the most common starting letter (S) and three of the most common overall letters: E, A, T, L. It also includes the two most common vowels (A, E).

Another high-frequency word is AUDIO, which is a popular community favorite because it checks off four of the five main vowels (A, U, D, I, O) immediately. If you get all grey tiles, you know the only vowel left must be E (or sometimes the letter Y).

You can head to our official list of best Wordle starting words to get ahead of the game.

Wordle Past Words

Wordle usually operates on a set of pre-defined lists of words that are set on a constant rotation. The original creator, Josh Wardle, had built the game using a list of 2,300 curated five-letter words deemed suitable as proper answers, set into a daily sequence.

When The New York Times acquired the rights to the game, they decided to run with the same sequence of words, although they chose to occasionally swap the positions or sequences from time to time.

Because the game follows a long, sequential list, no Wordle answer is ever repeated once it has been used. Many news websites track and publish the full list of past Wordle answers, often sorted by date and Wordle number. Using this list, some players like to study the answer pool to look for common word structures, letter combinations, or double-letter frequencies to inform their strategy.

We have also compiled a list of yesterday’s Wordle answer so you can check the words that have already been used to narrow down your guesses.

Wordle Like Games

Wordle’s success opened a whole new arena of single-player daily puzzles that offer quick fun and brain teasers to players of all ages online, and that too for free.

Here are some of the popular games like Wordle you should try:

• Connections: An official NYT puzzle, in Connections, players sort a grid of 16 words into four groups of four based on a hidden shared connection or category. It requires lateral thinking and grouping skills.
• Strands: Another official NYT puzzle, Strands requires players to find all the words hidden in a six-by-eight letter grid that relate to a single daily theme. You must also find a special word, the “Spangram,” that describes the overall theme.
• Quordle: In Quordle, you have nine guesses to solve four different five-letter words simultaneously. Every word you type is entered into all four grids at once, making strategic letter placement much more complex.
• Dordle: Dordle works quite similarly to Quordle, but is a slightly easier version of that. Players have seven guesses to solve two different five-letter words.
• Octordle: In Octordle, players have 13 guesses to solve eight different five-letter words. This puzzle is surely one for the word geeks out there.

Now that you know what Wordle is and how to play it, we can’t wait to hear your guesses in the comments of our daily Wordle articles.