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Wordle Rules Explained: Guesses, Colors, Hard Mode, and the Daily Puzzle

Wordle gives you six guesses to find a five-letter target. Learn how tile colors work, why repeated letters can get different feedback, and how Hard Mode changes later guesses.

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Wordle asks you to identify a hidden five-letter word in six guesses. After each guess, colored tiles show which letters are in the answer and whether they are in the right places: green is correct letter and position, yellow is in the answer but in a different position, and gray indicates a letter not accounted for in the answer. Repeated letters can make the feedback less intuitive, so the number of copies matters.

How a Wordle guess works

Enter a five-letter word, then use the tile feedback to choose a more informative next guess. The standard puzzle gives you six attempts to find its daily target, as described in this academic analysis of Wordle.

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Read the feedback by position: each tile tells you something about the letter in that slot, but the feedback for repeated copies depends on how many times the letter occurs in the answer.

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What the green, yellow, and gray tiles mean

The New York Times Help Center’s Wordle rules explanation defines the colors this way:

  • Green: The letter is in the answer and in the correct position. Keep it in that slot.
  • Yellow: The letter is in the answer, but not in the position where you guessed it. Try it in another slot.
  • Gray: That guessed copy of the letter is not counted as part of the answer. If you guessed the letter more times than it appears in the answer, some copies can be gray even when another copy receives green or yellow feedback.

For example, if the answer contains one R and your guess uses R twice, feedback can show one R as green or yellow and the other as gray. The colors account for the available copies in the answer; gray on one copy does not automatically mean the answer contains no R at all. TechRadar’s rules guide also describes this duplicate-letter behavior.

How repeated letters affect feedback

Wordle feedback is not simply a yes-or-no check for each letter independently. If a guess includes a letter more often than the target does, only the copies that can be matched to the answer receive positive feedback. This is why a repeated letter can appear in different colors in the same row.

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Use a gray duplicate carefully: it tells you that Wordle has no remaining matching copy to credit in that position after accounting for the target’s actual occurrences. It does not erase positive feedback for another occurrence of the same letter.

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What Hard Mode changes

Hard Mode adds a constraint to subsequent guesses: you must use revealed green letters in their confirmed positions and include revealed yellow letters somewhere in each later guess. The TechRadar rules guide describes these requirements.

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In ordinary play, a guess may test entirely new letters even after you have learned something about the answer. In Hard Mode, each guess must respect the information already revealed. That can make guesses more focused, but it also removes some freedom to use a turn solely to test other letters.

The daily puzzle and the physical party game are different

The usual Wordle puzzle is an online daily deduction game with one target and six attempts. Wordle is distinct from Wordle: The Party Game, a physical multiplayer adaptation documented in its published rulebook. The tabletop version is designed for group play, not as equipment needed to play the online daily puzzle.

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What these rules do not establish

The core rules explain how guesses and colors work, but they do not establish a reset time or timezone, whether every player receives the same target at a particular moment, or current archive, account, app, subscription, and statistics policies. The New York Times Help Center page linked above discusses Bonus Puzzles and distinguishes them from original daily-puzzle stats and streaks; it is not a complete current guide to all Wordle access or account details.

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