Type a five-letter word and press Enter. Each letter is then marked: black if it is in the answer in that same place, heavily outlined with a corner mark if it is in the answer somewhere else, and grey and struck through if it is not in the answer at all. Use the marks to narrow it down. You have six tries.

How are repeated letters marked?

A letter is marked only as many times as the answer has it. Letters in the right place are marked first; then each other copy is marked "elsewhere" only while the answer still has an unmatched one. So guessing SPEED when the answer is ABIDE marks the first E as elsewhere and the second as not in the word, because ABIDE has only one E.

Is there a new word every day?

Yes. The word of the day is the same for everyone on the same calendar date and changes at midnight on your device (a page left open keeps its word until reloaded); the puzzles are numbered from #1 on 1 September 2026. Practice gives a new random word whenever you like, and each practice word has a link, so you can send a friend the same one.

In hard mode every hint you have been given must be used: a letter shown in its place has to stay in that place, and a letter shown elsewhere has to appear in each later guess. It is set before the first guess of a word and cannot be switched part-way through.

Where do the words come from?

The answers are 2,082 five-letter words drawn from those in all three English learner’s dictionaries behind Alan Beale’s public-domain 12dicts lists, so they are words most people know; 27 that are unkind, a slur in one sense, or unpleasant are left out. Any five-letter word in ENABLE, a public-domain word list of about 8,600 such words, is accepted as a guess. Nothing you type is sent anywhere.

Word Guess

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Guess the five-letter word in six tries: a new word every day, unlimited practice words, hard mode, and results shared as squares without giving the word away.

Play

Hard mode off for this word

Loading the words…

How it works

Guess the five-letter word in six tries. Type on your keyboard or tap the keys, and press Enter. Each letter is then marked: black if it is in the word and in that place, heavily outlined with a corner mark if it is in the word somewhere else, grey and struck through if it is not in the word.

The word of the day is the same for everyone on the same date. A page left open past midnight keeps its word until you reload. Nothing is saved: a reload starts the game afresh, and a word you move on from is kept below until you leave the page. Copy result shares your tries as squares without the word; Copy link sends the same puzzle.

about this tool

How to play

Guess the hidden five-letter word in six tries. Type a word on your keyboard, or tap the keys under the board, and press Enter. Each letter of your guess is then marked:

Black — the letter is in the word, in that place.
Heavily outlined, with a mark in the corner — the letter is in the word, but in a different place.
Grey and struck through — the letter is not in the word.

The keys under the board take the same marks, so you can see at a glance which letters are left. Each mark has a cue besides its shade — a solid fill, an outline with a corner mark, a line through the letter — so they read in any colour vision and on any screen.

Repeated letters are marked as the answer has them. Letters in the right place are marked first; then any other copy of a letter is marked "elsewhere" only while the answer still has one to spare. Guess SPEED when the word is ABIDE and the first E is marked elsewhere but the second is grey, because ABIDE has only one E.

The word of the day, and practice

The word of the day is the same for everyone on the same date, and it changes at midnight by your device's clock; a page left open past midnight keeps its word until you reload it. The puzzles are numbered from #1, set on 1 September 2026. They run through every answer in a fixed order before any repeats, which takes nearly six years.

Practice gives you a fresh word whenever you want one, as many as you like. Each practice word comes from a short code, so Copy link sends a friend the very same word. A link to a word of the day works for today and any day before it, and for the next two days too, since the sender's date can be that far ahead of yours across time zones; a link the page cannot follow says so and opens today's word instead. A link carries hard mode with it when the game was played that way, and new words you start from it are hard too.

Switching between the word of the day and practice loses neither: each comes back where you left it, with any letters you had typed. Every word you move on from is listed under Put aside, and Last game returns to the most recent. Nothing is stored, though, so a reload starts afresh, and there are no streaks to keep.

Hard mode

In hard mode every hint has to be used. A letter marked black must stay in that place, and a letter marked elsewhere must appear in every later guess, as many times as it has been shown. Hard mode is chosen before the first guess of a word and stays for that word; the choice also carries on to new words until you change it. A result played in hard mode is shared with an asterisk after the score.

Sharing a result

Copy result gives your score and a grid of squares — green for in place, yellow for elsewhere, white for not in the word, the colours people know from sharing these games — without the word itself, so it spoils nothing for anyone who has not played yet. Copy link sends the same puzzle.

The words

The answers are 2,082 five-letter words drawn from those that appear in all three of the English learner's dictionaries behind Alan Beale's 12dicts lists, which keeps them to words most people use: those also in ENABLE, less 27 that are unkind, a slur in one of their senses, or unpleasant as a word of the day. Those are still accepted as guesses. Any five-letter word in ENABLE (the Enhanced North American Benchmark Lexicon, about 8,600 of them) is accepted as a guess. Both lists are in the public domain, and both are loaded with this page, so nothing you type is sent anywhere. For a different kind of puzzle, 2048, Minesweeper and Sudoku also share a game by link.

Without a mouse or a screen

The physical keyboard plays when the page itself or the board has focus; a link, a button or a field keeps its own keys — Enter on a focused on-screen key or Copy button presses that button — and tapping the on-screen keys leaves focus where it was, so Enter after a tap means a guess. On a keyboard laid out for another alphabet, the keys play the letters where a QWERTY keyboard has them. A screen reader hears each letter as it is typed, each marked row read out letter by letter, and how many tries are left; every row of the board and every key says its letters and their marks. Marked letters turn over into place in under a second; with reduced motion turned on, they simply appear.

questions

How do you play?: Type a five-letter word and press Enter. Each letter is then marked: black if it is in the answer in that same place, heavily outlined with a corner mark if it is in the answer somewhere else, and grey and struck through if it is not in the answer at all. Use the marks to narrow it down. You have six tries.
How are repeated letters marked?: A letter is marked only as many times as the answer has it. Letters in the right place are marked first; then each other copy is marked "elsewhere" only while the answer still has an unmatched one. So guessing SPEED when the answer is ABIDE marks the first E as elsewhere and the second as not in the word, because ABIDE has only one E.
Is there a new word every day?: Yes. The word of the day is the same for everyone on the same calendar date and changes at midnight on your device (a page left open keeps its word until reloaded); the puzzles are numbered from #1 on 1 September 2026. Practice gives a new random word whenever you like, and each practice word has a link, so you can send a friend the same one.
What is hard mode?: In hard mode every hint you have been given must be used: a letter shown in its place has to stay in that place, and a letter shown elsewhere has to appear in each later guess. It is set before the first guess of a word and cannot be switched part-way through.
Where do the words come from?: The answers are 2,082 five-letter words drawn from those in all three English learner’s dictionaries behind Alan Beale’s public-domain 12dicts lists, so they are words most people know; 27 that are unkind, a slur in one sense, or unpleasant are left out. Any five-letter word in ENABLE, a public-domain word list of about 8,600 such words, is accepted as a guess. Nothing you type is sent anywhere.