How to Play Word Guess
Guess the hidden word in six tries. Type any real word of the right length and each letter is scored: seated means right letter and right place, loose means right letter in the wrong place, sunk means no more copies of that letter are left to find. Use each row to narrow the field, and name the word before the six tries run out.
The rules, step by step
- 1Take the empty gridSix rows of four, five or six tiles. The length is the only thing you are told about the answer before you start, and it is enough to choose an opener with.
- 2Type a real word and press EnterAny word the dictionary knows of the right length is accepted. A word it does not know is refused without costing a try, so a typo never ends a round.
- 3Read the row you get backA seated tile is the right letter in the right place. A loose tile is the right letter somewhere else in the word. A sunk tile means no more copies of that letter remain to be found.
- 4Watch the supply on repeated lettersThe answer pays out each letter only as many times as it holds it, and seated matches are paid first. A second or third copy in your guess can come back sunk even though the letter is in the word.
- 5Use the on-screen keyboard as your notesEvery key remembers the best thing you have learned about that letter across all your rows, so you never have to scan back up the board to check whether you have already tried it.
- 6Name the word within six triesSix seated tiles in one row wins the round. If the sixth try is spent without that, the answer is shown in full — a round that leaves you not knowing the word teaches you nothing.
Try it — the rules above, running
New word deals a fresh answer at the length and mode you last chose, Hint places one more letter of the answer and costs one of your six tries — it is refused when you have only one left, so it can never be the move that ends the round. The three-dot menu holds today’s shared word, the word length and hard mode, which forces every letter you have been shown to be used again.
Your statistics · 5 letters
- Played
- 0
- Won
- 0
- Win rate
- 0%
- Streak
- 0
- Best streak
- 0
- Best time
- —
- Guesses used
- 0
How a letter is marked
- Seated: right letter, right place.
- Loose: right letter, wrong place.
- Sunk: that letter is not in the word — or not again.
Replay a word
Every word is a pure function of its number: the same number and the same length give the same answer on any device, any time.
Keyboard
- A – Z
- Type a letter
- Enter
- Submit the guess
- Backspace
- Delete a letter
- ?
- Show the shortcuts
- Shift + F
- Full screen
How does a round of Word Guess actually go?
- 1Choose the lengthFour, five or six letters from the three-dot menu. The setting is remembered, and each length keeps its own statistics, because they are genuinely different games.
- 2Open with a word full of common consonantsR, S, T and L do more separating than the vowels do. A single vowel in the opener is plenty; two is a reasonable compromise; five is a wasted row.
- 3Score the row and write down what it provesSeated pins a position. Loose says the letter is present but elsewhere. Sunk closes the count on that letter. The on-screen keyboard keeps all three for you.
- 4Aim the second row at what you do not knowOutside hard mode the second guess does not have to be a candidate — it has to be the word that splits the remaining field most evenly.
- 5Switch from testing to solvingOnce three positions are pinned, stop buying information and start naming candidates. With two rows left, a guess that cannot be the answer is a guess you cannot afford.
What do seated, loose and sunk mean?
- Seated — the letter is in the word and in that exact position. It is fixed for the rest of the round, and hard mode will hold you to it.
- Loose — the letter is in the word, but not where you put it. Try it somewhere else next row.
- Sunk — there are no copies of that letter left to find. Usually that means none at all; after a seated or loose match of the same letter it means no more.
- The known-letters strip under the grid gathers every position you have pinned, from a guess or from a hint, so the answer's skeleton is in one line instead of scattered up six rows.
Why did my guess with two E's only score one?
Because the answer only had one E to give. The scoring works in two passes: first every position where your letter and the answer's letter agree is seated and that copy is taken out of the supply; then, left to right, each remaining letter of your guess is marked loose only if a copy is still in the supply. A letter marked loose is consumed and cannot be marked twice.
Guess EERIE against the answer PEARL and only the second E scores, because it is in the right place and takes the word's single E; the first and last E come back sunk with the R marked loose between them. Guess GEESE against EATEN and two E's score loose — the answer has two, neither in place — while the third gets nothing. This is the single most commonly botched rule in games of this shape, and it is worth a minute of your attention because a third of five-letter answers repeat a letter.
Should you turn hard mode on?
| Normal | Hard mode | |
|---|---|---|
| Must reuse a seated letter in place | No | Yes |
| Must reuse a loose letter somewhere | No | Yes |
| Must reuse both copies once two are proved | No | Yes |
| May re-try a sunk letter | Yes | Yes |
| May spend a row on a word that cannot be the answer | Yes | Only if it fits what you know |
Turn it on when you want the round to be about reading the board rather than about buying information, and leave it off while you are still learning which openers pay. It never makes a round unwinnable: the answer satisfies every constraint the board has produced, by definition, so it is always a legal guess. If you like this kind of deduction with numbers instead of letters, sudoku is next door; if you would rather name letters one at a time, hangman is the older game this one descends from.
How do you win more often?
- Open with consonants, not with vowelsEvery answer has a vowel, so vowels separate very little. Measured against this game's 3,050 five-letter answers, TEARS leaves 78 candidates standing on average while ADIEU leaves 167 and AUDIO leaves 264 — the all-vowel opener costs you most of a turn.
- Spend the second row on information, not on a hunchOutside hard mode a guess does not have to be a candidate. If your opener left forty words and thirty of them differ only in two letters you have not tested, guess a word containing both even if it cannot be the answer — one row that halves the field beats two rows that each eliminate one word.
- Test S at five letters before you test it at four25.7% of five-letter answers end in S against 15.4% of four-letter ones, so the same letter is worth two thirds more in the longer round. At four letters A is the better spend: it appears in 34.4% of those answers, almost level with E's 35.9%.
- Read a sunk tile as a count, not as a banSunk means no copies are left, which is the stronger statement. A row that spends three E's on a word holding one has proved the answer contains exactly one E — so stop looking for a second, and stop wasting positions on it.
- Treat a revealed Q as a free UAll 22 five-letter answers containing a Q have a U immediately after it, without exception. The reverse is not true — U turns up in hundreds of answers with no Q anywhere near — so a Q hands you a letter and a position for nothing.
- Leave the vowel-free answers until lastOnly 10 of the 3,050 five-letter answers contain no A, E, I, O or U at all, and every one of them leans on Y. If four rows have ruled out every vowel, you are in that tiny group and the answer is almost certainly built around a Y.
Common questions about word guess
- What is a good first word to guess?
- One with four common consonants and one vowel. Against this game's five-letter answers, TEARS leaves 78 candidates standing on average and RAISE 79, while ADIEU leaves 167 — the vowel-heavy openers are the weak ones.
- Why was my word rejected?
- It was either the wrong length, a word the dictionary does not hold, or one you had already tried this round. A rejection never costs you a try, and in hard mode a guess can also be refused for dropping a letter the board has already shown you.
- Does guessing the same word twice cost a try?
- No. A repeat is refused before it reaches the board, because a word you have already guessed cannot tell you anything new. Nothing is spent and the row stays open.
- Is there a way to play the same word as a friend?
- Yes. Every round has a number, shown in the status bar and on the win panel. Type it into the Replay a word box under the board and you get that word back — it is computed from the number and the length alone, so a friend on any other device gets the identical answer with no account and no server involved.
- How is this different from hangman?
- Hangman scores one letter at a time and punishes a miss; this scores a whole word at once and never punishes you for the letters, only for the tries. The deduction is richer here because position is part of every answer you get back.
Ready to stop reading? Play word guess on the full board, with controls and statistics tailored to that game.