How to Play Wordle: A Beginner's Step-by-Step Guide

Wordle looks simple from the outside — a grid of empty squares and a keyboard — but the first time you open it, nobody tells you what to do with them. The good news is that the whole game can be learned in about two minutes. There is one puzzle a day, it is the same word for every player in the world, and you get six guesses to find it. Here is the full walkthrough, from opening the page to solving your first word.

Where to Play the Real Wordle

The official Wordle lives on The New York Times website and inside the NYT Games app on Android and iOS. It is free to play, and you do not need an account just to solve the daily puzzle, although an account lets your statistics follow you between devices. Be aware that the internet is full of clones with similar names. They can be fun, but only the NYT version is the daily game everyone else is talking about, and only it carries your streak.

Step 1: Open the Game and Skim the Rules

Head to the Wordle page and tap Play. The first time you visit, the game shows a short rules pop-up with an example grid. Read it once — it explains the colour system, which is genuinely all you need to know — then close it with the X in the corner. You will be looking at six rows of five empty boxes. That is the whole board.

Step 2: Type Your First Five-Letter Word

Pick any real five-letter word and type it in, then press Enter. For a first guess, a word that mixes vowels and consonants gives you the most information: something like ARISE, AUDIO or CRANE tests five different letters at once. Avoid wasting the opener on a word with repeated letters, because you learn less from it. Once you press Enter, the tiles flip over one by one and change colour.

Step 3: Read the Colours

This colour feedback is the entire game. Every guess tells you exactly how your letters did:

The on-screen keyboard updates too, colouring each key so you can see at a glance which letters are confirmed, possible or dead.

Step 4: Keep Guessing Until the Row Turns Green

Build each new guess out of what you have learned. Keep green letters exactly where they are, move yellow letters somewhere new, and never knowingly reuse a grey letter. You have six rows in total. If a guess turns the whole row green, you have solved it — the game shows your statistics, your current streak and a countdown to tomorrow's puzzle, plus a Share button that copies a spoiler-free grid of coloured squares you can paste anywhere.

If you are stuck between several possible answers late in the game, experienced players sometimes use a burner word: a guess they know is wrong, chosen because it tests the handful of letters that separate the remaining candidates. It feels wasteful, but one smart burner on guess four can save you from a coin flip on guess six.

A Few Things New Players Miss

• Letters can repeat. The answer might contain the same letter twice, like SHEEP or LEVEL, and the colour rules handle each copy separately.
• Wordle uses American spelling. Think FAVOR and HUMOR, not FAVOUR and HUMOUR.
• There is only one puzzle a day. Solve it or miss it, the next word arrives at midnight your local time.

That is genuinely everything. Open the page, guess a word, read the colours, adjust, and repeat up to six times. Your first solve might take five guesses and ten minutes; within a week you will wonder what confused you.