Four guesses gone, two greens, a stray yellow, and a brain that suddenly can’t think of a single five-letter word. Every Wordle player knows the moment. Here’s how to turn your green, yellow and grey clues into a systematic shortlist — the strategy, the best starting words, and a free word finder that does the pattern-matching for you.
Quick help: open the free AMTake Word Unscrambler, type the letters you know with ? for the unknowns (e.g. CRA??), and use the Starts-with / Ends-with / Contains filters for your green and yellow letters. Instant list of valid 5-letter candidates — free, no sign-up.
1Read your clues like a solver
| Tile | What it tells you | What to do with it |
|---|---|---|
| 🟩 Green | Right letter, right position | Lock it: the word must have this letter exactly here |
| 🟨 Yellow | Right letter, wrong position | The word contains it — but not in the spot you tried |
| ⬛ Grey | Letter not in the word* | Eliminate it from all future guesses |
*The asterisk: with repeated letters, a grey can mean “no second copy”. If you guess SPEED and one E is yellow while the other is grey, the answer has exactly one E. This is the single most common trap in late-game Wordle.
2Start strong: what makes a good opener
The best opening words pack the most common letters into one guess. English five-letter words lean heavily on E, A, R, O, T, L, I, S, N — so openers like SLATE, CRANE, TRACE, STARE and AROSE test high-frequency consonants and vowels at once. Vowel-heavy starters like ADIEU confirm vowels quickly but waste slots on rarer consonant coverage.
The two-probe opening: many strong players spend guesses one and two on complementary words with ten different letters — e.g. SLATE then CORNY — clearing most of the alphabet before committing. (Not for Hard Mode, which forces you to reuse revealed clues.)
3Turn clues into candidates with the word finder
- Type what you have In the Word Unscrambler, enter your confirmed letters plus a ? for each unknown position’s blank — e.g. two greens and a yellow from C, R, A becomes CRA??.
- Pin the greens Use Starts with or Ends with when your greens sit at the edges (green T in position 1 → Starts with T). Every result then respects the locked positions.
- Force the yellows Put yellow letters in the Contains filter — they must appear somewhere. Then scan the 5-letter results and skip any word that puts a yellow back in a spot you already tried, or reuses a grey letter.
- Pick the candidate that tests the most When several words fit, choose the one whose remaining letters are most common — it either wins or eliminates the most alternatives for your final guess.
4Late-game patterns that trap everyone
Some ending patterns have brutally many candidates — if your greens are _IGHT, the answer could be LIGHT, MIGHT, NIGHT, RIGHT, SIGHT, TIGHT, FIGHT or EIGHT. With only two guesses left, don’t test them one by one: guess a word that contains several of the differing first letters at once (e.g. FILMY tests F, L and M together), then finish. The same applies to _OUND, _ATCH and SHA_E families — the word finder shows you the whole family instantly so you can count what you’re up against.
5Is using a helper cheating?
That’s between you and your streak. Three honest ways players use one: after losing, to see what the clues should have suggested; as a coach, checking whether a better guess existed once the puzzle is done; and as a lifeline on the last guess rather than breaking a 200-day streak. Where you draw the line is yours — the tool works the same for practice puzzles, Scrabble, Words with Friends and crosswords, where nobody’s counting.
6Frequently Asked Questions
How do I find 5-letter words with certain letters?
Enter the letters you know plus ? wildcards for the blanks in the Word Unscrambler, and use Starts-with, Ends-with and Contains to pin positions. The results are grouped by length — read the 5-letter band.
What’s the best Wordle starting word?
There’s no single champion, but SLATE, CRANE, TRACE and STARE consistently rank at the top of solver analyses because they cover the most common letters in common positions. Pick one and stay consistent — you’ll read the results faster.
How many 5-letter words are there?
Wordle accepts thousands of valid guesses, but the answer list is a much smaller curated set of a few thousand common words — which is why obscure dictionary words are legal guesses but never answers. Prefer common words when guessing for the win.
Can a Wordle answer have repeated letters?
Yes — answers like SWEET, ROBOT and LEVEL exist. If a repeated-letter guess shows one copy yellow/green and the other grey, the answer contains exactly one copy.
Does the word finder work for Scrabble and Words with Friends?
Yes. It unscrambles up to 15 letters with ? wildcards (blank tiles), shows point scores, and clicking any word opens its dictionary definition with pronunciation.
