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How to play Word of the Day

One secret five-letter word, six tries and a colour-coded hint after every guess. Word of the Day is Wordarling's Wordle-style daily puzzle: the same word for everyone, one game a day.

What it is

Every day the game picks a five-letter word from the most familiar part of the vocabulary. You have six tries to work out what it is. After each guess the letters change colour to show how close you got. Every player in the same language gets the same word that day — English and Portuguese have different words — and it changes at midnight Brasília time (UTC−3).

The rules, step by step

1. Type a guess of five letters on the on-screen keyboard (or your physical one) and press Enter.
2. Only real words count. If the game doesn't know the word, it says so and the try is not used up.
3. Read the colours:
   • Green — the letter is in the word, in the right spot.
   • Yellow — the letter is in the word, but somewhere else.
   • Grey — the letter is not in the word (or has already been fully counted; see repeated letters below).
4. Let the keyboard keep notes. Each key remembers the best colour that letter has earned, and grey letters are locked so you don't repeat them.
5. Get it within six. Solve it and all five letters turn green. Run out of tries and the game shows you the word.

A sample game

Say today's word is PLANT.

First guess, TRAIN. The A is green: it's the middle letter. T and N are yellow: they're in the word, just not in the 1st and 5th spots. R and I are out.

Second guess, PLATE. Now P, L and A are locked in. T is in the word but not 4th, and N is still waiting for a home. There's only one arrangement left…

Third guess, PLANT: five greens. Solved in 3/6.

The repeated-letter rule

This is the part that trips people up. The colour of a repeated letter depends on how many times it appears in the answer. The game first paints green every letter in the right spot; then, left to right, it paints the others yellow — but only while that letter still has unused copies in the answer. Example with the answer PLANT and the guess TOTAL:

Nothing is in place, so there are no greens. The first T takes PLANT's only T and turns yellow; the second T has nothing left to match, so it goes grey. Lesson: in a guess with repeated letters, a grey letter doesn't necessarily mean that letter is missing from the word.

Strategy

• Open with common letters. A first guess packed with frequent letters — vowels plus R, S, T, L, N — sketches the word fast. TRAIN, STARE or CRANE are solid openers.
• Move your yellows. A yellow means "not here": try that letter in a new spot next time.
• Think in English patterns. Five-letter words love endings like -ER, -ED, -LY and -CH, and starts like ST-, CH- and SH-.
• Spend a try to eliminate. With four letters fixed and several options for the last (_IGHT: LIGHT, NIGHT, RIGHT, SIGHT, FIGHT…), a guess that tests several new consonants at once can save you from guessing one by one.

Common mistakes

• Putting a yellow back in the same spot. Yellow means "not here".
• Forgetting the repeated-letter rule and ruling out a letter that only went grey on its second copy.
• Chasing one pattern too long when the greens could fit several words.

Leaderboard, rewards and sharing

You can play signed out — your result stays on the device. With a Google account, a win earns coins and 50 XP, counts towards your daily streak and missions, and puts you on the daily leaderboard: fewer tries wins and ties go to whoever solved it faster. There are no helps or paid hints in this mode.

At the end, the share button produces a little grid of 🟩🟨⬛ emoji showing your path to the answer without giving away a single letter. Send it to friends without spoiling anything.

FAQ