Word Guess
Guess the hidden word in six tries. Every guess colours its letters: green means right letter, right place, and purple means the letter is in the word but somewhere else.
- Free
- No ads
- No account
- No download
- Works offline
- Single player
How do you play?
- Choose a length - Four, five or six letters. Switch whenever you like; the streak restarts.
- Type a guess - Any word of the right length is accepted. There is no secret dictionary rejecting you.
- Read the tiles - Green is in place, purple is in the word elsewhere, grey is not in the word at all.
- Narrow it down - Spend the next guess on letters you have not tested yet, rather than confirming what you already know.
- Solve it - A solve adds one to your streak and deals a new word. Six misses reveals the answer and resets the streak to zero.
About this game
Pick a length. Type a word. Read the colours. That is the whole game, and it takes about ten seconds to learn.
The interesting question is which word to open with, so we measured it rather than guessing. Every word in a list was played as a first guess against every possible answer, and we counted how many candidates survive once the colours come back. Our 4-letter English list holds 53 words. Opening with road cuts that to 4.81 on average, the best we have. Opening with plum leaves 20.36 standing, which is well over a third of the list. The gap has nothing to do with how common the words are. Plum spends its four tiles on four different letters but three of them are rare; road spends its on letters that actually split the list in half.
Repeated letters are the expensive mistake. Banana looks like a fine six-letter opener and leaves 7 words standing where planet leaves 1.27, because banana is really only asking about three letters. Pizza does the same thing at five.
Here is the honest limit, and it will save you a mild disappointment: the lists are short. Fifty-three four-letter words, 47 at five, 37 at six. Play for twenty minutes and a word will come round again. We chose that on purpose. A longer list means reaching for words a child has never met, and a word you cannot read is a word you cannot guess, so we kept every entry to something concrete that turns up in an ordinary day.
Nothing leaves the device. Close the tab mid-word and it is waiting where you left it, streak included.
What does it teach?
Spelling under pressure
You have to assemble a whole word from letters, then do it again with better information. That is the drill, and it does not feel like one.
Deduction
Each row is evidence and the next row is what you did with it. Word game on the surface, logic underneath.
Letter frequency
Play a while and you start to feel which letters earn their place in an opener. Nobody teaches this. The scoreboard does.
Patience
Six tries is generous. There is no clock.
Tips
Never spend a letter twice
Banana is the worst six-letter opener we have for exactly this reason. Six tiles, three letters. Open with a word whose letters are all different.
Vowels are cheap information
They turn up in almost everything, so testing them early costs one guess and rules out a great deal. Road and rain both score well on this alone.
Purple is a gift
It tells you two things from one tile: the letter belongs, and the position you tried is wrong. Grey only ever tells you one.
Guess two decides the game
After a good opener at four letters you are down to roughly 5 candidates. That is where a round is won, not on the last row.
What age is it for?
Seven and up
Reading and spelling simple words is the entry requirement, which is why this one is not filed under our pre-reading games.
School age
The four-letter level is built for this group. Every answer is a concrete everyday thing: food, animals, weather, things in a room.
Grown-ups
Six letters is a real puzzle, particularly once you are protecting a long streak.
Accessibility
Every key clears 44 pixels, the game takes a physical keyboard as happily as the on-screen one, and green and purple were picked to differ in lightness as well as hue so they stay distinguishable to a colour-blind player. A solved word is also read aloud, as a bonus rather than a requirement: the word is always on screen in letters.
Playing together
Alternate guesses
One guess each. The child types, the adult explains why that word and not another.
Say it before you press
Announce what the guess is testing before submitting. It turns a hunch into reasoning, and the reasoning is the part that sticks.
Chase one streak
The record is kept per length. Beat yesterday's without dropping to an easier level.
Common questions
Is it free?
Yes. No payment, no ads, no sign-up. Open it and play.
Do I need to install anything?
No. It runs in the browser on a phone, tablet or computer, and it keeps working offline after your first visit.
Can I guess a word that is not in the list?
Yes, and that is deliberate. Any word of the right length is marked. The list decides what the answer can be, never what you are allowed to try.
Does it work in Hebrew?
Yes, and the Hebrew is not a translation of the English. It has its own word lists, its own keyboard, and it handles final letters for you.
What gets saved?
The word in progress, your current streak and your best streak per length, all on the device. There is no account, so a phone and a tablet keep separate records.
What happens when I run out of guesses?
The word is revealed, the streak goes back to zero, and a new word is dealt. That is the whole penalty.