Play Five Letters Online — Free Word Guessing Game
Introduction
Five Letters gives you six attempts to work out a hidden five-letter word. Type any real word, press Enter, and each letter turns green, yellow or grey — green means right letter in the right place, yellow means right letter in the wrong place, grey means the letter is not in the word at all. That is the entire rule set. Everything else about this game is you, sitting there, refusing to accept that you have wasted three guesses on words starting with S.
About Five Letters
Five Letters is an open-source word game written by Web Dev Simplified and released under the MIT licence. It is a clean, self-contained implementation of the guess-the-word format, with its own word list bundled locally so the game works even if your connection drops after the page has loaded. It is an independent community project and is not affiliated with any commercial word game.
The appeal is that it is a pure information game. There is no vocabulary flex involved — the answer is almost always a common word — and there is no time pressure. What the game actually measures is whether you use your guesses to gather information or to chase hunches. Those are very different strategies and they produce very different average scores.
A game takes two to five minutes and there is exactly one puzzle available at a time, which is part of why the format works. You cannot grind it. You get your six attempts, you either find the word or you do not, and the result stays with you slightly longer than it reasonably should.
How to Play Five Letters
Type any five-letter word.
Use your keyboard or the on-screen keyboard below the grid. Your first guess does not need to be clever, but it should contain five different letters.
Press Enter to submit.
The word must be in the game's dictionary. If it is not recognised the grid shakes and the guess is rejected without costing you an attempt.
Read the colours.
Green means that letter is in the word and in exactly that position. Yellow means the letter is in the word but somewhere else. Grey means it is not in the word at all.
Use what you learned.
Every colour is a constraint on the answer. Your next guess should respect all of them — keep green letters where they are and move yellow letters somewhere new.
Solve it within six guesses.
Turn every tile green before you run out of rows. If you fail, the game reveals the answer so at least you find out what you were missing.
Five Letters Controls
| Action | Desktop | Mobile |
|---|---|---|
| Type a letter | Any letter key A to Z | Tap a letter on the on-screen keyboard |
| Delete last letter | Backspace key | Tap the backspace key on the on-screen keyboard |
| Submit your guess | Enter key | Tap the Enter key on the on-screen keyboard |
| See which letters are ruled out | Read the colour of each key on the on-screen keyboard | Read the colour of each key on the on-screen keyboard |
| Start a new word | Reload the page | Reload the page |
| Reveal the answer | Use your final guess — the answer is shown if you lose | Use your final guess — the answer is shown if you lose |
| Fullscreen | Click the fullscreen button above the board | Tap the fullscreen button above the board |
| Exit fullscreen | Escape key | Tap the fullscreen button again |
Five Letters Tips & Strategies
Spend your first guess on five different letters
A word with a repeated letter wastes a slot. Openers such as CRANE, SLATE or AUDIO test five separate letters at once and will usually return at least one colour, which is the whole purpose of guess number one.
Cover vowels early, but not all of them
Two vowels in your first guess is the sweet spot. Three or more crowds out the consonants that actually separate candidate words, and English has far more consonant patterns to eliminate than vowel patterns.
Yellow means move it, not remove it
The most common mistake is putting a yellow letter back in the same position out of habit. A yellow tile has already told you that position is wrong, so re-testing it throws away one fifth of your next guess for no information at all.
When stuck, guess a word you know is wrong
If you have four green letters and five possible endings, do not guess them one at a time. Play a word that tests several of those candidate letters simultaneously, even though it cannot be the answer. One sacrificed guess beats three failed ones.
Watch for double letters late
Words such as ABBEY, SPOON and TRUSS break the assumption that all five letters differ. If you have eliminated most of the alphabet and nothing fits, a repeated letter is very often the reason your candidate list looks empty.
Read the keyboard, not just the grid
The on-screen keyboard greys out letters you have already ruled out. Glancing at it before each guess prevents the single most frustrating way to lose a game, which is submitting a word containing a letter you personally eliminated two turns ago.
What makes Five Letters worth playing
- Six attempts to find the hidden five-letter word
- Colour feedback on every letter after each guess
- On-screen keyboard that tracks which letters are ruled out
- Word list bundled locally so play continues without a connection
- Open source under the MIT licence with credit to the developer
Game Info
| Developer | Web Dev Simplified |
|---|---|
| Released | 2022 |
| Genre | Word, Puzzle |
| Players | Single player |
| Technology | HTML5 / JavaScript |
| Platforms | Desktop, Tablet, Mobile browser |
| Average session | About 4 minutes |
| Licence | MIT |
| Last updated |
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Five Letters — Frequently Asked Questions
Is Five Letters free to play?
Yes. Five Letters is open source under the MIT licence and free to play here with no payment, no sign-up and no premium tier of any kind.
How many guesses do I get?
Six. Each guess must be a real five-letter word from the game's dictionary, and invalid words are rejected without using up one of your attempts.
What do the colours mean?
Green means the letter is correct and in the right position. Yellow means the letter is in the word but in a different position. Grey means the letter does not appear in the word.
Can I play Five Letters on my phone?
Yes. The game includes a full on-screen keyboard, so no physical keyboard is needed and it works normally in portrait mode on both iOS and Android.
Why was my word rejected?
The guess must appear in the game's bundled dictionary of common English words. Proper nouns, abbreviations and very obscure words are not included, so a valid English word can still be refused.
Is there a new word every day?
The game selects a word for the current puzzle and reloading the page starts a new one, so you are not limited to a single attempt per day.
Is this the same as other word guessing games?
It uses the same widely-used six-guess colour-feedback format but it is an independent open-source implementation with its own word list, and it is not affiliated with or endorsed by any commercial word game.
Licence & Attribution
Five Letters, based on an open-source game by Web Dev Simplified · MIT License
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