Word Guess
Guess one hidden five-letter word. You have six guesses. Each guess is colored so the next one is better informed. Solving the word, or using all six guesses, ends the game.
Players
One solver. The same word can be raced: everyone plays that one puzzle, and the race ends when the word does. There is no second word.
Setup
The word is drawn from a curated list of five-letter English words. The same seed always deals the same word. Share the puzzle so a friend opens that word, unsolved, instead of a new deal.
A turn
Type letters on the on-screen QWERTY keyboard, then press Enter. Phones get the same layout as desktops.
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The guess must be exactly five letters.
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The guess must be a listed English word. A guess of the wrong length, or one that is not in the word list, is refused and does not spend a guess.
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Delete rubs out the last letter.
How a guess is colored
Each letter is marked once, in two passes:
1.
A letter in the right place is green, and that occurrence in the word is used up.
2.
The remaining letters are read left to right. A letter that still occurs unused in the word is yellow. Anything else is gray.
A letter is never marked present more times than it appears in the word. Two of the same letter in your guess become two greens only when the word has two, and a second copy is gray once the word's copies are all accounted for — greens first, then yellows.
The keyboard keeps the best news it has about each letter. Green beats yellow, and yellow beats gray. A later guess never paints a key back to a weaker color.
Letter marks
Every colored tile and key also shows a mark, so color is not the only signal: a check for a letter in the right place, a question mark for a letter in the wrong place, and an x for a letter that is not in the word. The colors stay the same.
End of the word
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Solve it and the word is shown, with how many guesses it took.
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Miss all six and the word is revealed.
Either way the puzzle is over. Start a new game for a new word, or share this one so someone else can try the same word.