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What Is Wordle, the Game People Can’t Stop Playing (and Talking About)?

wordle puzzle

Is there anything as satisfying as solving the day’s Wordle in under four guesses? The daily word game is simple, but if you want to become a Wordle pro, there are a few tips and tricks you should know. Here, we’ve rounded up everything you need to know to become an expert, including the best Wordle starting word, the most common letters in Wordle solutions and the quickest way to narrow down the letters used in a word.

What is Wordle?

Wordle is a word guessing game that’s like a combination of hangman and the old board game Mastermind. In Wordle, you’re attempting to guess a five-letter word. You have six attempts to guess the word correctly, and after each attempt, the game will tell you if a letter is in the word and in the right place (green), in the word but in the wrong place (yellow) or not in the word (grey).

The Best Wordle Starting Word

The most important tip for getting better at Wordle is choosing a good starting word. Ideally, your starting word should contain five unique (no double ups, although these are allowed in Wordle) and commonly-used letters like E, T, A, I, N, O, S, H and R. Also, the letters that most commonly start words in the English language are T, A, O, I and S.

That means ‘ratio’, ‘roast’ and ‘train’ are good starting words, but words like ‘waved’ and ‘queue’ are less useful in helping you solve the day’s Wordle.

What Should Your Next Guess Be?

Your next guess is just as important to help you close in on the solution. One strategy is to use your first three guesses on words that contain 15 unique letters. Usually, this will tell you what most of the letters in the word are, even if they’re in the wrong place. From there, you can rearrange the letters you know are in the solution to form a new word. I’ve used this strategy three times now, and each time I’ve confirmed all five letters by the third guess and been able to solve it on the fourth.

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Does Wordle Repeat Letters?

Wordle solutions can include the same letter twice, but the game doesn’t tell you when you’ve guessed a double letter. For instance, if the solution is ‘trees’ and you guess a word ending in E, the game will tell you that the E is in the word but in the wrong position but it won’t tell you that there’s another E. That means solving Wordle puzzles with repeat letters can be tricky, and often the easiest way to solve these ones is to solve the other letters and fill in the blanks.

Does Wordle Use American or Australian Spelling?

Even though Wordle is hosted on a UK server, which lead many people in Australia to assume that our native spelling was valid, the game’s creator Josh Wardle is based in the US. Wordle uses American spelling, which means words like ‘favor’, ‘color’ and ‘honor’ can be solutions.

What Time Does Wordle Reset in Australia?

There’s a new Wordle every day, and you only have 24 hours to solve it before the site updates. But when, exactly, does that happen for everyone in Australia, since the game is made by an American and hosted on a UK server?

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Wordle resets at 12am Australian Eastern Daylight Time. That means you can solve the next Wordle at soon as the clock strikes midnight, if you happen to still be awake, or save it for your morning coffee.

This post originally appeared on POPSUGAR Australia Gaming. 

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