It’s the fifth row. You’ve got three green letters, a yellow you can’t place, and a nagging feeling there are about six words it could be. Do you gamble on one – or play something cleverer?
Wordle Sleuth helps with exactly that moment. It’s a Wordle helper: you play your puzzle as normal, copy in the colours you got, and it shows every word that still fits and which guess would narrow things down the most. This guide shows how to use it, and what it can teach you about playing better on your own.
How to use it
- Type the word you guessed in your game. If it isn’t a valid word, Sleuth tells you and clears it.
- Tap the tiles to match your colours. Tap once for yellow, twice for green, and a third time to go back to grey. Only tap the ones that came back yellow or green.
- Press Enter. Anything you didn’t tap counts as grey, and the lists update straight away.
Set the colours before you press Enter. If you do press it too soon, don’t worry – just tap the tiles on that row to fix them. Letters that were already green get filled in for you on later rows, which saves a lot of tapping.
As you go, Sleuth shows you three things:
- How many words still fit – or, when you’re down to one, what it is.
- Best next guess – the top six guesses, ranked by how much each one is expected to narrow the list. A dot marks the ones that could actually be the answer.
- Words that still fit – every remaining possibility. Type a letter or a group of letters into the Find a word box to show only the words containing them, and tap any word to use it as your next guess.
Two ways to guess
Sleuth has two modes for its suggestions, and they show a real choice every Wordle player makes.
Any valid word suggests whatever gathers the most information, even if it can’t possibly be the answer. Possible answers only sticks to words that could still win the game. The first finds the answer more reliably; the second gives you a chance of getting lucky on every guess.
Here’s the same puzzle – the answer was SHARD – solved by following Sleuth’s top suggestion in each mode:
| Guess | Any valid word | Possible answers only |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | TARSE → 12 words left | RAISE → 21 words left |
| 2 | HOKAN → 2 left (SHARD, SHARP) | STRAP → 6 left |
| 3 | SHARD ✓ | SCARF → 4 left (SHARD, SHARK, SNARL, SWARM) |
| 4 | SHARD ✓ |
TARSE and HOKAN are strange words that were never going to be the answer. But they were chosen because they split the possibilities up brilliantly: after just two guesses, only SHARD and SHARP were left – a coin toss for a three. Sticking to real candidates took four, because the last few answers were all very alike – though each of those guesses had a small chance of winning outright.
Neither mode is “right”. If you enjoy the chance of a lucky two, play possible answers. If you want the steadiest route to the answer, try a probing word.
What Sleuth teaches you about Wordle
Your opening word matters less than you’d think. Sleuth’s favourite openers when sticking to real answers are RAISE, SLATE, IRATE, CRATE, ARISE and TRACE. They’re all within a whisker of each other. Any word with common letters like R, S, T, L, E and A and a couple of vowels will do the job well.
Grey tiles are good news. A row of five greys feels awful, but it rules out a huge number of words. Knowing what isn’t there is often as useful as knowing what is.
Beware of word families. That SHARD, SHARK, SNARL, SWARM moment is the classic Wordle trap. When several answers share most of their letters, guessing them one at a time can burn all your rows. A guess that tests several of the different letters at once is usually smarter.
Use greens and yellows. A yellow tells you a letter is in the word but not in that spot. Try to put it somewhere new on your next guess, so you learn where it does go.
Learn from your finished games. One of the best ways to use Sleuth isn’t during the game at all. Play the puzzle yourself, then enter your guesses afterwards and see how many words were left at each step, and what Sleuth would have played. You’ll quickly spot which of your guesses were strong and which ones wasted a row.
Longer words, too
Wordle itself uses five-letter words, but there are plenty of versions with longer ones. Use the Letters buttons to switch Sleuth to anything from 5 to 12 letters. For longer words, it uses a list of common words as the likely answers, backed up by a full word-game dictionary.
Its favourite openers change as the words get longer. For seven letters, PARTIES is top of the list. For eight, it likes CALORIES and ARTICLES, and for nine, PENALTIES and REACTIONS. Notice the pattern: lots of common letters, with an S or IES ending to test the most frequent word endings.
Questions people ask
Is it free?
Yes, completely. It runs entirely in your browser, and nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Which words does it know?
For five letters, it uses Wordle’s answer list – the original list plus every past answer – along with every valid guess. If nothing on the answer list fits your clues, it automatically checks the full list. You can choose which list to use under Answer pool.
It says 0 words fit. What happened?
Almost always a tile colour is wrong. Tap the tiles in your earlier rows to check and fix them.
Does it remember my board?
Yes, it’s saved in your browser. Press Clear board to start a new puzzle.
What are “bits”?
A measure of how much a guess is expected to shrink the list. Each bit roughly halves it, so a 3-bit guess should leave about an eighth of the words.
Is it made by the people behind Wordle?
No. Wordle is © and a trademark of The New York Times Company. Wordle Sleuth is an independent helper and is not affiliated with or endorsed by The New York Times.
Over to you
Try playing today’s puzzle on your own first, then open Wordle Sleuth and replay your guesses to see how you did. And if you’re tackling several boards at once, Wordle Multi does the same job for up to eight boards.
Happy sleuthing!