Wordle Solver – find the best next guess

How it is calculated

How to use the Wordle solver

1. Make a guess in the game and note the colours.
2. Type each green letter into the box for its position (position 1 = far left).
3. Type each yellow letter into the yellow box of the position where it appeared: it is in the word, but not there. Several yellow letters for one position can go in the same box.
4. Type all grey letters into the last box, no separators needed.
5. The best next guess appears at the top, followed by every matching five-letter word ranked by information value.

Upper and lower case do not matter. Your entries are kept in the address bar, so you can bookmark or share a position.

Double letters, handled correctly

Wordle only colours a repeated letter green or yellow as many times as it appears in the answer; any extra copy turns grey. So:

• A grey letter that is also green or yellow in the same guess does not mean "not in the word" – it means "exactly as many as marked green/yellow".
• Two yellow E's, or one green and one yellow E, in the same guess mean: at least two E's.

The simple boxes cannot know which guess a hint came from, so they play safe (the answer is never wrongly removed). For exact results use previous guesses: one line per guess with the word and five digits, e.g. SPEED 00101. The coloured squares from the share text (⬜🟨🟩) work too, and in high-contrast mode 🟦 for yellow and 🟧 for green. You can combine both ways of entering hints.

How the information value is calculated

Every possible guess splits the remaining words into groups, according to the colour pattern (up to 3⁵ = 243 patterns) it would produce against each possible answer. A good guess spreads the candidates over many small groups. That is measured by the entropy in bits: with n candidates and group sizes k it is −Σ (k/n) · log₂(k/n). Each bit halves the number of possibilities on average; 6 bits is roughly a factor of 64.

The column Avg. left after shows how many words are expected to remain after that guess (Σ k² / n). With very many candidates, the words with the best letter frequencies are pre-selected and only those are calculated exactly; the rest are listed at the end without a bit value.

The best next guess may be a word that no longer fits: it tests five new letters at once and often narrows things down faster. In hard mode (revealed hints must be used) pick the top word of the list instead.

Best Wordle starting words (calculated)

Calculated over all 5,151 words in our list: for every word, the colour pattern against every other possible answer (about 27 million comparisons), then the entropy.

The top words combine the most frequent letters in the list – S, E, A, R, T – with no repeats. A different answer list, such as the one a particular game uses, shifts the order slightly; the principle stays the same.

Wordle strategy in three steps

1. Open with a word from the table above: five common, different letters.
2. Second guess: take the solver's suggestion even if it cannot be the answer. New letters give more information than a long-shot guess among hundreds of options.
3. Endgame: once only a few words remain, play for the win. With two candidates, every guess is a 50 % shot.

Classic trap: many words sharing one pattern, like _IGHT or _ATCH. Rather than trying them one by one, use a guess that tests several of the possible first letters at once – that is exactly what the suggestion finds.

About the word list

The list is based on SCOWL (Spell Checker Oriented Word Lists, size 60, US and UK spellings, © Kevin Atkinson): all 5,151 five-letter words made of A–Z, including plurals and verb forms, without proper nouns and without words SCOWL marks as offensive. It is not the official answer list of any game; a very rare word may be missing.

This site is an independent helper and not affiliated with The New York Times or the Wordle game. "Wordle" is only used to describe the type of puzzle. We deliberately do not publish daily answers.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and legal basis

• Word list: SCOWLv2 (Spell Checker Oriented Word Lists) release 2026.02.25, size 60, US and UK spellings – © Kevin Atkinson, SCOWL licence; all five-letter words
• Word list origin, filters and licence text (on this website)

As of: 27 September 2026