Infinite Wordplay › How to Play

How to Play and the Best Starting Words

The rules take two minutes to learn. Getting good takes a smart first guess, a feel for double letters and a habit of using every clue. This guide covers all three, with numbers computed from our own word lists.

The rules in 30 seconds

1. There is a hidden word. On the home page it has five letters; you can also play 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9 letters.
2. Type a real word of the same length and press Enter.
3. The tiles change color: green means the right letter in the right spot, yellow means the letter is in the word but somewhere else, gray means it is not in the word.
4. You have six guesses (seven for 8 and 9 letters). In infinite mode a new word follows every round; the daily puzzle changes at midnight Eastern Time.

How double letters work

This is the rule that trips people up. Each letter in the answer can only color one tile in your guess. Greens are assigned first, then yellows from left to right. If you guess a word with two E's and the answer has only one, only one E lights up: green if it is in the right place, otherwise yellow on the leftmost one. The other E turns gray, which is a clue in itself: the word has exactly one E. If both copies light up, the answer has at least two.

The best starting words, by the numbers

A good first guess is one whose colors split the possible answers into many small groups, so that whatever the result, few words are left. We measured that for every candidate word against each full answer list (the score is in bits of information; higher is better) and also counted how many answers remain on average. Here are the best everyday words for each length:

Two things stand out. First, the best openers are full of the most common letters: E, A, R, T, S, I and O. Second, long words are easier to pin down than they look. After one good nine-letter guess, only about 2.5 answers are left on average; with five letters it is about 51.4. The catch with long words is thinking of a word that fits, not finding the letters. If you do not mind unusual words, a few rarer openers score slightly higher, such as RATINE for six letters.

Strategy that actually works

• Cover the vowels early. A five-letter answer has 1.78 vowels on average; two guesses that together test A, E, I, O and U tell you where the word's skeleton is.
• Use guess two for new letters. In normal mode, a second guess with no overlap tests ten letters in two turns.
• Move your yellows. A yellow letter is in the word but not there. Put it somewhere new each time.
• Never reuse grays. The on-screen keyboard grays them out for you.
• Think about doubles when you are stuck. SPEED, ALLOT and GEESE catch people every day.
• Count before you guess. In the last two turns, list the words that still fit. If there are more than two, play the word that splits them best, even if it cannot be the answer.

Hard mode

Turn on hard mode in Settings (the gear button) and every revealed hint must be used: green letters stay in place, yellow letters must appear in every later guess. That rules out pure test words, so each guess has to be a real candidate. Your shared score gets a star, like 4/6*. More on the hard mode page.

Streaks, stats and sharing

Infinite mode counts wins in a row; the daily puzzles count days in a row, and a missed day starts the streak again. The stats button (the bar chart) shows games played, win rate, streaks and your guess distribution. When a round ends you can copy your grid of colored squares or share it straight to WhatsApp or X. The grid never shows the word. In infinite mode, Challenge a friend sends a link to the exact word you just played.