How to Play Word of the Day

Word of the Day is a free daily word guessing game. Everyone gets the same secret five-letter word each day, you have five guesses to find it, and the tiles change color to tell you how close you are. If you have played Wordle® or any of its cousins you already know the shape of it. This page covers the exact rules, the one difference that catches people out, and how the daily reset, streaks, and unlimited mode work.

The rules in one breath

• •Type any real five-letter word and press Enter. Made-up words are rejected and do not cost a guess.
• •Each tile turns green, yellow, or gray to tell you about that letter.
• •Use the clues to narrow it down. You have five guesses in total.
• •Find the word and your streak grows by one. Miss it and the streak resets.

What the colors mean

• •Green: that letter is in the word and in exactly that position. Leave it where it is.
• •Yellow: the letter is in the word but somewhere else. Try it in a different slot next guess.
• •Gray: the letter is not in the word at all. The on-screen keyboard grays it out too so you do not reuse it by accident.

Repeated letters follow the usual convention. If the answer has one E and you guess a word with two, only one of them can light up, and green takes priority over yellow. So a second E showing gray means there is exactly one E in the answer, not zero.

Five guesses, not six

This is the difference that matters. Most daily word games give you six tries; Word of the Day gives you five. That missing guess makes a strong opening word and a disciplined second guess much more important. The tips page goes into which starting words earn the most information and how to avoid the rhyming-word trap that eats your last guess.

When does the daily word change?

The word resets at midnight in your own time zone, so it never flips mid-evening the way UTC-based games can. Everyone who shares a calendar date shares a word, which is what makes comparing results with friends work. Each puzzle has a number, shown when you share your result, so you can tell which day someone is talking about.

Your progress on today's word is saved in your browser. Close the tab halfway through and you can come back later the same day and finish. Once you have won or lost, the board stays locked until the next word arrives.

How streaks and stats are counted

• •Your current streak is the number of daily words solved in a row. Solving today's word adds one; running out of guesses resets it to zero.
• •Skipping a day does not break the streak by itself, because a day you never played is neither a win nor a loss. The streak only resets when you lose.
• •Max streak, games played, win rate, and a guess-distribution chart live in the stats panel behind the bar-chart icon.
• •Stats are stored on this device only. There is no account, so a different phone or a cleared browser starts fresh.

Unlimited mode

Finished the daily and want more? Switch to unlimited mode for as many random five-letter puzzles as you like, with the same rules and the same five-guess limit. Unlimited rounds do not touch your daily streak or stats, so they are a safe place to test a new starting word or warm up before tomorrow's puzzle.

Sharing your result

After a daily game, the share button copies a spoiler-free grid of colored squares with the puzzle number and your score, like "3/5". It never includes the letters, so you can post it anywhere without ruining the word for anyone who has not played yet.

Quick answers

• •Do I need an account? No. Nothing to sign up for, nothing to download.
• •Does it work on a phone? Yes, in any modern browser. Add it to your home screen and it opens like an app.
• •Is it a Wordle alternative? Yes. It plays the way fans of Wordle® expect, with a tighter five-guess budget and an unlimited practice mode built in.
• •What counts as a valid guess? Any real five-letter word in the game's dictionary. If a word is rejected with "Not in word list", it does not cost you a guess.