The free five-letter word game Daily Word

How to play Daily Word

Daily Word is a word of the day game. There's one secret five-letter word each day, and everyone gets the same one. You have six guesses to find it. Every guess gives you clues, so each try gets you a little closer.

1. 1Type any real five-letter word with the on-screen keyboard and submit it as your first guess.
2. 2Look at the tiles. Mint green means that letter is in the word and in the right spot.
3. 3Yellow means the letter is in the word but belongs somewhere else.
4. 4Dark gray means the letter isn't in the word at all. The keyboard shows which letters you've already used, so you don't waste a guess on them.
5. 5Use those clues to build your next guess. Made-up words aren't accepted, so you can't just test a random string of letters.
6. 6Find the word within six guesses to win and add a day to your streak. Then share your result or start a practice round.

A new word arrives every night at midnight Eastern time, which is 9 p.m. on the West Coast. Miss a day or run out of guesses and your current streak goes back to zero, but your best streak stays on the board.

How to get better at Daily Word

Open with a word that has five different letters and a couple of vowels, like CRANE, SLATE or AUDIO. On your second guess, try mostly new letters instead of chasing one yellow tile, because ruling letters out is worth as much as finding them. Once you have three or four letters in place, slow down and list every word that still fits before you type the next one.

More tips for solving in fewer guesses

• Test common letters early. E, A, R, T, O, L, S and N show up in a lot of English words. Q, X and Z can wait.
• Keep double letters in mind. Words like SPOON, LEVEL or KITTY are easy to overlook when you're hunting for five different letters.
• Watch the keyboard. Gray keys are letters you can stop thinking about, and that narrows things down fast.
• Think about word shapes. Plenty of words start with SH, CH, ST or TR, or end in ER, LY or ED.
• If two or three words still fit, spend a guess on a word that tells them apart, even if it can't be the answer.
• Stuck on guess five? Step away for a few minutes. The word often jumps out when you come back.

Unlimited practice rounds

Once you've finished the daily puzzle, win or lose, you can keep playing. Practice rounds use words from earlier days, and you can play as many as you like. If you've been looking for an unlimited five-letter word game that doesn't make you wait until tomorrow, this is it.

Practice is a good place to try a new starting word or test a strategy you read about. The daily word is still the one everyone else is solving, so that's the one to compare with friends.

Your stats, streak and sharing

Daily Word keeps track of games played, your win percentage, your current streak, your best streak and a guess distribution that shows how often you solve it in two, three, four guesses and so on. It's a nice way to see whether that new starting word is actually helping.

All of it is saved only on the device you play on. There's no account, so your phone and your laptop each keep their own record. If you switch phones or clear your browser data, your stats start fresh.

When you finish, you can share your result. It's a grid of colored squares that shows how your guesses went without giving away a single letter, so you can post it in the group chat without spoiling the word for anyone.

Playing with friends, family or a class

Because everyone gets the same word, Daily Word turns into a small daily habit you can share. Couples solve it over coffee. Coworkers compare grids before the first meeting. Families keep a group chat going about who got it in three.

It also works out loud. Put it on a laptop or classroom screen and let the class vote on each guess. Kids practice spelling and vocabulary without noticing, and the words are family-friendly.

Where the five-letter word game comes from

Guessing a hidden word from clues is older than smartphones. The pencil-and-paper game Jotto and the code-breaking board game Mastermind work in a similar way, and the TV game show Lingo was built around five-letter words.

Wordle, created by Josh Wardle and later bought by The New York Times, made a daily five-letter puzzle a habit for a lot of people. Daily Word is our own independent game based on that classic format. It has its own word list and no connection to that game or to The New York Times.

Questions