Daily Word Tips: Solve in Fewer Guesses

The Daily Word gives everyone the same five-letter word and six tries to find it. A little letter sense turns a lucky solve in five into a steady solve in three or four.

Updated 2026-10-05

Open with the commonest letters

E appears in almost half of the possible answers, A in two in five and R in more than a third; O, T, L, I and S each turn up in more than a quarter. An opening such as SLATE, CRANE or TRACE tests several of them at once.

Answers are everyday words. Regular plurals and past tenses (CATS, JUMPED) are never the answer, so an S in the last place is rarely right — fewer than one answer in fifty ends in S.

Spend the second guess on new letters

Unless the first guess lit up three or more tiles, use your second on five letters you haven’t tried yet, even if it can’t be the answer. Two guesses that cover ten common letters usually leave only a handful of words, and you still have four tries to find the right one.

Read repeated letters carefully

Nearly a third of the answers repeat a letter, as in SPEED or LEVEL. A letter is marked yellow only as many times as the answer still contains it, so if you guess a word with two Es and one comes back grey, the answer has exactly as many Es as the coloured ones.

A green letter can appear again elsewhere: a green E in the last place doesn’t rule out a second E earlier in the word.

Don’t fall into the -IGHT trap

Some endings fit many words: -IGHT (FIGHT, LIGHT, MIGHT, NIGHT, RIGHT, SIGHT, TIGHT), -OUND or -ATCH. Guessing them one at a time can use up every try. Instead, spend one guess on a word packed with the candidate first letters — for -IGHT, FILMS or MOTHS tests F, M, S and T together — then finish with the one that’s left.

Fewest guesses, then fastest

The daily leaderboard ranks solves by guesses, and breaks ties by the time from opening the day’s game to the winning guess, as measured on the server. A lost game isn’t ranked.

Each guess is checked on the server, so nobody can read the answer out of the page — and the share button posts only coloured squares, so you can compare results without spoiling the word for anyone.

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