What is a Daily Five?
Daily Five is a word puzzle in which you find a hidden five-letter word in six guesses, with every letter of each guess coloured green, yellow or grey to show whether it is in the right place, in the word but elsewhere, or not in the word at all.
Also known as: Wordle-style word game, five-letter word guessing game.
How do you solve a Daily Five?
- 01
Open with a word that covers common letters
The first guess is played blind, so choose a word built from frequent letters such as S, T, R, A and E, with no repeats. Every letter gives a verdict, and five different letters give five verdicts. A word with a repeated letter spends one of its five slots asking a question you have already asked.
- 02
Read yellows as positions ruled out, not just letters found
A yellow says two things: the letter is in the word, and it is not in that column. Both facts narrow the field. When you place a yellow letter in your next guess, put it somewhere it has not already been tried, so that the guess tests a new column rather than repeating a known miss.
- 03
Watch for the pattern trap
Words that share four letters with a known pattern, such as the family that ends in -ATCH, can outnumber your remaining guesses. When you see a shape like that, play a guess that tests several of the candidate letters at once, even if it cannot itself be the answer, rather than trying them one by one.
- 04
Account for doubled letters late
Repeated letters are common in five-letter words and easy to overlook. If your fourth guess still leaves gaps that no new letter seems to fill, try doubling one you already have. A guess with two of a letter will show only as many marks as the answer contains, which tells you the count directly.
Common Daily Five mistakes
- Assuming every letter is different. One green E does not rule out a second E, since a repeated letter is marked only as often as the answer contains it.
- Re-using a grey letter. Grey means the letter is not in the word at all, so any guess containing it is answering a question you have already settled and wasting a whole row.
- Guessing a possible answer too early. Hunting for a single green on the second row throws away the chance to test five new letters, and that information is what makes rows four and five decisive.
Where does Daily Five come from?
The five-letter, six-guess format was created by Josh Wardle, a software engineer who built Wordle in 2021 as a game for his partner and released it publicly that autumn. It spread through shared emoji grids, and in early 2022 The New York Times bought it. Its answer list, which deliberately favoured familiar words over obscure ones, is a large part of why the game felt fair.
Daily Five is this site's own implementation of that puzzle type. The scoring is the standard one, including the rule that a repeated letter is only marked as many times as it appears in the answer, and the pool is drawn from words that have been published as answers in the original, so the difficulty is the one people already know.
How many guesses do you get in Daily Five?
Six. The answer is five letters long and every guess must be a real word from the game's dictionary. A guess that is not in the list is refused before it is scored, so a typo never costs you a row.
Is Daily Five free, and how often is there a new word?
It is free and needs no sign-up. A new word is published every day at midnight UTC, and signing in is only needed if you want your results on the leaderboard. There is also a timed mode in which you solve as many words as you can against the clock. It plays on a phone as well as a desktop.