A complete strategy guide
Core technique · Last updated 6 August 2026
Choosing an opening word is the part of the game everyone talks about. Guesses three and four are where games are actually won and lost, and they are barely discussed at all. This guide is about the middle of the puzzle.
The one idea that matters
Every guess you make is doing one of two jobs:
- Gathering information — narrowing down which words remain possible.
- Attempting the answer — trying to win outright.
Weak players treat every guess as an attempt at the answer. Strong players know which job they are doing on each row, and choose the word accordingly. Once you internalise this, the awkward middle of the puzzle becomes much clearer.
The counter-intuitive consequence: sometimes the best guess is a word you already know is not the answer. Spending a row purely on information is not giving up a turn — it is buying certainty for the rows that follow.
The probe
Here is the situation that decides most games. You have four letters confirmed and the remaining candidates are:
SIGHT LIGHT MIGHT NIGHT FIGHT RIGHT TIGHT
You have three guesses left and seven candidates. If you guess them one at a time you have a 3-in-7 chance, and you will probably lose.
Instead, guess a word that tests several of the differing letters at once. Something like FIRMS tests F, R, M and S in a single row. It cannot possibly be the answer — and that is fine, because the result will almost always identify the answer outright:
- Green or yellow F → the answer is FIGHT
- R → RIGHT, M → MIGHT, S → SIGHT
- All grey → the answer is LIGHT, NIGHT or TIGHT, and you still have two guesses for three words
You converted a 43% position into something close to a certainty by giving up a guess. This single technique is the largest available improvement for most players.
When to probe
The rule of thumb is simple: probe when you have more candidates than remaining guesses.
| Situation | Do this |
|---|---|
| 2 candidates, 2+ guesses left | Just guess one. A probe gains nothing. |
| 3 candidates, 3 guesses left | Guess one, then decide. You can afford it. |
| 4+ candidates, 3 guesses left | Probe. Do not start guessing hopefully. |
| Any number, 1 guess left | Guess the most common word. Nothing else to do. |
The mistake to avoid is probing too late. A probe on guess four when you have two guesses left and five candidates is much weaker than the same probe on guess three.
Yellow-letter discipline
A yellow square carries two pieces of information, and players routinely use only the first:
- This letter is in the word.
- This letter is not in that position.
The second is a genuine constraint and it should visibly change your next guess. If A came back yellow in position two, your next guess must place A somewhere else. Re-using a yellow letter in the same slot wastes a row — the square will simply come back yellow again and you will have learned nothing.
The same discipline applies to grey letters, and this is the more common error under time pressure: once a letter is grey, it is gone. Before submitting, run your eye across the word and check you have not reintroduced a dead letter. The on-screen keyboard colours exist precisely for this check, and it is worth the two seconds.
How duplicate letters are scored
This is the most misread mechanic in the game, and it costs people puzzles.
The colouring is worked out in two passes. Greens are assigned first, for letters in exactly the right place. Only then are the leftover letters in the answer matched against your remaining letters, from left to right, and only as many times as that letter actually occurs.
Work through a real example. Suppose the answer is BERRY and you guess ERROR:
- Pass one: your third letter R sits where BERRY also has an R → green.
- BERRY contains two Rs; the green has consumed one, leaving one.
- Pass two, left to right: your E is in the word but misplaced → yellow. Your second letter R claims the last remaining R → yellow. Your O is absent → grey. Your final R finds no R left → grey.
So you can see a grey R even though the answer contains two of them. A grey letter does not always mean "this letter is absent". When you have guessed that letter more than once, it means "there are no more of this letter than the ones already coloured". Reading that grey as "no R" eliminates the correct answer and loses the game.
The practical takeaway: when a repeated letter comes back partly coloured and partly grey, you have learned the exact count of that letter. That is valuable information, and it is precisely the information most players throw away.
Do not forget double letters exist
When you are stuck with a pattern that seems to have no solution, the answer is very often a word with a repeated letter. Players build a mental list of candidates using five distinct letters and never think of ABBEY, EERIE, LLAMA, SKIFF, PUPPY or GEESE.
If you are confident about your constraints and no word fits, ask explicitly: could a letter appear twice? It resolves the impasse more often than not.
Working the negative space
Beginners track which letters are in the word. Stronger players track which letters are out, because the eliminated set is usually far larger and does more of the work.
By guess three you may have ruled out twelve or more letters. That is most of the alphabet's common consonants, and it constrains the answer sharply. Before choosing your next word, glance at the greyed-out keyboard as a whole rather than at the board — it is often quicker to see what remains available than to reason forward from the greens.
A worked example
Say you open SLATE and get: S grey, L grey, A yellow, T grey, E grey.
That is a productive row, though it may not look it. You know there is an A, that it is not in position three, and that five common letters are gone — including the high-frequency S, T and E.
A weak follow-up is a word like ABOUT: it re-uses the dead T, and places A in a position you might reasonably have tested elsewhere. A strong follow-up is something like CHAIR or MANOR — it moves the A, and brings in four fresh high-value letters (C, H, I, R) rather than recycling exhausted ones.
The general principle: after a sparse result, prioritise new letters over trying to place the one letter you have found. You have plenty of rows left; use them to build a picture rather than to chase a single square.
Endgame: count, then commit
When you reach guess five or six, stop optimising and start counting. Write out — mentally or literally — every word that fits your constraints. Then:
- If one word fits, guess it.
- If several fit and you have one guess, choose the most ordinary word. Answer lists favour everyday vocabulary over obscure ones.
- If several fit and you have two guesses, check whether a probe can separate them. If not, guess the most common and keep the other in reserve.
Between two equally plausible candidates, the more familiar word is the better bet more often than not.
Summary
- Know whether each guess is gathering information or attempting the answer.
- Probe when candidates outnumber remaining guesses — even with a word that cannot win.
- Move your yellows; never re-use a grey.
- Remember that a grey duplicate means "no more of these", not "none of these".
- When nothing fits, suspect a double letter.
- In the endgame, enumerate candidates before guessing.
Next, read about the word families that trap good players — the situations where even correct play needs a plan in advance.