What is a Wordle solver?
A Wordle solver lists every five-letter word that still fits the clues from your guesses. Enter your green letters in their positions, your yellow letters under the positions where they appeared, and your grey letters as excluded. Unknot Words checks the whole US (NWL) or UK (CSW) word list and shows only the words that agree with every clue.
By Unknot Words · Last updated
How to enter your clues
- Green tiles (correct): type each green letter in the box for its position, 1 to 5. Leave the other boxes empty.
- Yellow tiles (misplaced): type each yellow letter under the position where it turned yellow. If a letter was yellow in different columns on different guesses, add it under each one. Every position takes up to three letters.
- Grey tiles (excluded): type every grey letter in the excluded box. Leave out any letter that is also green or yellow. A grey copy of a letter you already found only means the word has no extra copy of it, and the solver rejects a letter that is both included and excluded.
- Solve. The list updates with every word that is still possible.
A worked example
Say your first guess is CRANE. The A turns green, the E turns yellow and C, R and N are grey. Enter A in position 3, E in the yellow box for position 5, and crn as excluded. In the US dictionary that leaves 74 possible words, from BEADS and DEATH to YEAST.
Your second guess, LEAST, comes back with E, A, S and T all green and L grey. Add those clues and only three words remain: BEAST, FEAST and YEAST. Rather than guessing them one at a time, you could play a word that tests B, F and Y together, such as BEEFY, to find the answer for certain on the next row.
Wordle strategy in brief
- Open with common letters. E, A, R, O, T, L, I, S and N appear most often in five-letter words. Openers such as CRANE, SLATE, TRACE and STARE test several of them at once.
- Don't waste a guess on known letters too early. On guess two, testing new letters can rule out more words than reusing your greens.
- Watch for repeated letters. Words like SPEED, LLAMA and ABBEY catch many players out. If the list of candidates is short and nothing fits, consider a double letter.
- Use the count, not just the list. When dozens of words remain, choose a guess that splits them into groups; when two or three remain, just pick the most common word.
For a deeper walkthrough, read Wordle strategy: using green, yellow and grey clues.
Why the list may include unusual words
Wordle's answers are drawn from a curated list of a couple of thousand common words, while the allowed-guess list is much larger. This solver searches the complete Scrabble dictionaries, with about 9,500 five-letter words in NWL and about 13,000 in CSW, so it can show plurals and rare words that are unlikely to be the day's answer. That makes it useful for other five-letter word games too. When you play Wordle itself, pick the common, everyday words from the results first.
Need to unscramble letters instead? Try the word unscrambler, or use the Scrabble word finder to fit words onto a board.
Frequently asked questions
How does the Wordle solver work?
Enter the green, yellow and grey tiles from your guesses. The solver checks every five-letter word in the selected dictionary and keeps only the words that agree with all of your clues, listed alphabetically.
What do green, yellow and grey tiles mean?
Green means the letter is in the word at that exact position. Yellow means the letter is in the word but at a different position. Grey means the letter does not appear in the word at all.
Can I enter more than one yellow letter per position?
Yes. Each position accepts up to three yellow letters, so you can record every letter that has turned yellow in that column across several guesses.
Why does the solver list words that are never Wordle answers?
The solver searches the full Scrabble word lists, which include plurals and uncommon words that Wordle rarely or never uses as answers. Prefer common everyday words from the list when choosing your next guess.
What is a good first guess in Wordle?
Strong openers use five different, common letters, such as CRANE, SLATE, TRACE or STARE. They test the most frequent letters at once, which usually leaves far fewer possibilities after the first row.
Is using a Wordle solver cheating?
It depends on how you play. Many players use a solver after finishing to learn which guesses would have been better, or when stuck, to see how many words remain. Used that way it is a learning tool for vocabulary and logical deduction.