Word Guess: daily and unlimited five-letter word game

How to play Word Guess

1. Type any real five-letter word and press Enter. Our dictionary accepts about 6,400 five-letter words, so you can guess freely.
2. Each tile changes color. Green: right letter, right spot. Yellow: the letter is in the word but somewhere else. Gray: the letter is not in the word (or not as many times as you used it).
3. Use what you learn to make your next guess. You have six tries.

The hidden answer always comes from a smaller list of 858 everyday words. We built the list from the most frequently used English words, then removed obscure words, offensive words and simple plurals like cats, so the answer is always a word most people know.

What our answer list tells us

We counted the letters in all 858 possible answers. These numbers come straight from the list the game uses, so they are a real guide to what to guess:

• E appears in 50% of answers, R and A in 41%, T in 34%, and O and I in 29%.
• The rarest letters are J (0.8%), X (0.9%), Z (1.3%) and Q (1.4%). Don't spend an early guess on them.
• S is the most common first letter (17% of answers), followed by C (9%). The most common last letters are E (22%), T (13%), and R and Y (11% each).
• The most common ending is -ER (63 answers), then -SE, -CH, -TH and -CK.
• 28% of answers have a repeated letter, such as sheep, apple or radar. If you are stuck with few letters left, try a double.
• 61% of answers have exactly two vowels. Only 2 of 858 answers have four.

Best starting words

We scored every answer word with five different letters by how often its letters appear in the answer list, with a bonus for letters in their most common positions. The top starters are STARE, IRATE, ARISE, AROSE, TRACE, RAISE, SHARE and ALTER.

A good second guess uses five fresh letters. After STARE, try LOGIC, CHILD or CLOUD. Between them, STARE and CHILD test ten different letters, including eight of the ten most common ones and three vowels.

See our full starting-word guide for the best openers at every word length.

A simple strategy that works

1. Guesses 1 and 2: gather information. Use two words with no shared letters. Don't worry about using your yellows yet.
2. Guess 3: narrow it down. Put your yellow letters in new positions and keep your greens in place.
3. Before guesses 4 to 6: list the options. When you have three or four letters, write down every word that fits. If there are many (for example _IGHT: fight, light, might, night, right, sight, tight), use one guess that tests several of the missing letters at once, such as FLING, instead of trying them one by one.

Common mistakes

• Reusing a gray letter. It wastes a whole slot.
• Putting a yellow letter back in the same spot. Yellow means "not here".
• Forgetting doubles. A gray second E only tells you there is just one E.

Daily or unlimited?

The daily word is the same for everyone and changes at midnight on your device, so you can compare with friends. Your result shares as colored squares only, so it never spoils the answer. Unlimited mode gives you a new random word each round for practice. Missed a day? Replay any earlier daily word from the puzzle archive.

Want a different challenge? Try 4 letters for a quick game or 7 letters for a tougher one.

Written and tested by the Puzzlenest editors. Letter statistics are calculated from the game's own answer list. Updated November 1, 2026. How we make our puzzles