What is a Fibble?
Fibble is a word puzzle in which you find a hidden five-letter word from coloured rows where exactly one tile in every row is lying, so each guess must be weighed against the others rather than taken at face value, with an opening row played for you and eight guesses of your own.
Also known as: Wordle with a liar, lying Wordle.
How do you solve a Fibble?
- 01
Start from the free row
The opening row is a common letter-coverage word, already scored, with one of its five tiles false. Do not act on it alone. Its job is to give your first real guess something to be checked against, so play a second word that overlaps it in one or two letters and see whether the two rows agree.
- 02
Look for contradictions, not confirmations
A lie shows itself when two rows disagree: a letter grey in one row and green in another, or a green in a column that another row's yellow says the letter cannot occupy. Only one tile per row is false, so if two rows conflict on a letter, one of those two tiles is a liar and every other tile in both rows is true.
- 03
Flag the liar and settle the rest
Click a tile to flag it as the row's suspected lie; clicking another tile moves the flag, since there is only one liar per row. Right-click, or long-press on a phone, to settle a tile you are sure of. Once a row's liar is found, the other four tiles are plain facts and can be read as an ordinary row.
- 04
Solve the rows as a system
By the middle of the game you have several rows each with one unknown false tile. Pick a candidate word and check it against every row: it must contradict exactly one tile per row and none more. A candidate that clashes with two tiles in a single row is impossible, however good it looks.
Common Fibble mistakes
- Forgetting that the free row lies too. Its opener is a real word scored for real, with one tile corrupted like any other row.
- Trusting a lone green. A false green is exactly the lie the game likes best, and a letter placed on the strength of one tile can cost several rows before it is found out.
- Assuming the lie only downgrades. A grey can be reported green and a green can be reported absent; lies run both ways, so a surprising grey on a letter you have placed is as suspect as a surprising green.
Where does Fibble come from?
Fibble emerged in 2022 as one of the games that kept the five-letter daily format of Josh Wardle's Wordle and changed how much the feedback could be trusted. Its rule is small and severe: one tile per row is wrong, it may be wrong in either direction, and which tile it is changes from row to row.
This site's Fibble is its own implementation of that puzzle type. The first row is played for you with an ordinary opening word, because a liar on an empty board has nothing to contradict, and the lie in each row is fixed from the day so a reload can never change what a row said. When the game ends, the board rings every tile that really lied beside the ones you accused.
How many guesses do you get in Fibble?
Nine rows, of which the first is played for you, leaving eight guesses of your own. The budget is larger than an ordinary five-letter game because a guess buys evidence rather than fact.
Is Fibble free, and when does the puzzle change?
Fibble is free and needs no sign-up. A new word, opener and set of lies are fixed every day at midnight UTC, and there is a timed mode in which you solve as many as you can against the clock. An account is only needed for the leaderboard. It plays on a phone as well as a desktop.