Daily word
Six guesses, one word, new puzzle at midnight. Same word for everyone.
The rules and the colors, exactly
One five-letter word per day, six guesses to find it. Every guess must be a real word: the game checks it against a dictionary of about 8,500 valid five-letter words, while the daily answer itself is drawn from a curated list of 791 common ones. That split matters for strategy, because you can probe with obscure words but the answer will never be one.
Colors follow the standard two-pass rule. Greens are marked first: right letter, right spot. Then yellows are awarded left to right, but only up to the number of times the letter actually appears in the answer. So if the answer has one E and you guess a word with two, one E gets colored and the other goes gray. A gray duplicate next to a yellow one is information: it tells you the answer contains exactly one of that letter.
Guessing well
Open with coverage. Words like SLATE, CRANE, or RAISE test several of the most frequent letters at once. On the second guess, resist the urge to immediately reuse your yellows; a second probe of five fresh common letters often narrows the field more than a premature solve attempt. By guess three you usually know enough to start placing letters for real.
The tip that pays off most on this particular puzzle: remember the answer pool is the small list. When you are stuck between candidates, prefer the ordinary word over the exotic one. WIDTH beats WITHY every time, because withy is a word the dictionary will accept from you but the puzzle will never ask of you. Also mind repeated letters: 217 of the 791 possible answers contain a duplicate, words like SWEET and LEVEL, so more than a quarter of all puzzles will punish anyone who never tests one.
Streaks and the distribution chart
Your streak counts consecutive calendar days with a solve; miss a day or fail a puzzle and it resets to one on your next win. The bar chart below the board is your own guess distribution across every day you have played, so over time it becomes an honest portrait of your style: a hump at three and four is typical, a fat bar at two means you either run hot openings or get lucky, and entries at six are the days the duplicate-letter words got you. All of it, including today's half-finished grid if you close the tab, is stored on your device and restored when you come back.
How the daily word is chosen
There is no server picking words at midnight. The page computes the number of days since January 1, 2026 in your local time zone and uses it to index the answer list, so everyone on the same date gets the same word and friends can trade emoji grids without spoilers. The flip happens at your local midnight, which means a friend a few time zones ahead is technically living in your future; ask them not to gloat. The consequences of this design are worth knowing: there is no way to play past days, no account, and no cross-device sync, so your streak lives in one browser. Clearing site data ends a streak more surely than a hard puzzle. The share button copies your result as the familiar colored-square grid, with the letters left out.
Frequently asked questions
How do the colors work?
Green: the letter is in the word at that exact spot. Yellow: the letter is in the word but somewhere else. Gray: the letter is not in the word at all. Repeated letters are colored no more times than they appear in the answer.
When does the word change?
At midnight in your local time zone. The word is chosen from the same list for everyone, so friends can compare grids without spoilers.
What is a strong opening word?
Words that cover common letters: raise, adieu, slate, or crane all test several vowels and frequent consonants at once. Follow with untested common letters rather than repeating grays.
Can I play past days?
No, one puzzle a day is the format. Your streak counts consecutive days with a solve, stored on your device.