How to play
- Type any nine-letter word and press Enter.
- Read the tiles:
- Green: right letter, right spot.
- Yellow: the letter is in the word, in a different spot.
- Gray: the letter is not in the word.
- Find the word within six guesses.
Repeated letters follow one rule: each letter in the answer can only color one tile in your guess. If the answer has one S and you guess two, only one of them lights up.
Why nine letters plays differently
At nine letters, whole chunks of a word start to feel familiar before you have placed a single tile: common prefixes, common endings, and a middle section that carries most of the meaning. That familiarity cuts both ways. It helps because you can often guess the shape of a word early. It hurts because two or three words can share that shape right up to your last guess.
Repeated letters are also far more common at this length. A word like POSSESSED (an example only, never an answer here) carries the same letter four times over, and if you are not watching for it, a letter that lit up once can seem to vanish on a later guess.
Tips for nine-letter words
Cover both ends of the word first. A strong opener tests letters from the start and the end, since nine-letter words often carry their clearest syllable at one edge, not the middle.
Check for a repeated letter once you are close. If your found letters do not seem to add up to nine, a letter appearing more than once is the usual reason.
Try a guess that could not be the answer. With three or four candidates left, a guess built to separate them beats guessing one candidate at a time.
Do not fear an uncommon letter. Nine-letter words draw from a wide vocabulary, mostly built from smaller pieces, so letters like C, G and P show up more than you might expect.
Keep the keyboard in view. Gray letters on the keyboard are your cheat sheet for what not to type, and at nine letters there is a lot to track without it.
Give the middle guesses a job. Once your opener has colored a few tiles, do not guess words that merely feel plausible. Pick a guess that would tell two shapes apart, even if it cannot be the answer itself.
A quick example
Say your first guess is COMPUTERS (an example only, never an answer here).
- C turns green: it belongs in the first spot.
- O turns gray: there is no O in the word.
- M, P and U turn gray.
- T turns yellow: there is a T, but not in the sixth spot.
- E and R turn gray, and S turns green in the ninth spot.
Your next guess should keep C in spot one and S in spot nine, include a T somewhere other than spot six, and avoid O, M, P, U, E and R. One guess has already ruled out six letters and placed two more.
Daily and unlimited
The Daily nine-letter word is the same for everyone today and counts toward your streak. When you finish, you can share a grid of colors, with no letters in it.
Unlimited gives you a new nine-letter word every time. Use it to test openers and hard mode before tomorrow's daily.
Try another length
- Five-letter daily for the classic length.
- 8 letters for a shorter round, or 10 letters for one
more letter still.
- 32 boards if nine letters on one board feels too easy.