4 letter Wordle strategy

Count your spare guesses

Subtract unsolved boards from guesses left. That number is your margin. A guess that solves a board keeps the margin; a guess that solves nothing lowers it by one.

The starting margin is small at every size:

• 1 board: 6 guesses, 5 spare.
• 4 boards: 9 guesses, 5 spare.
• 16 boards: 21 guesses, 5 spare.
• 32 boards: 37 guesses, 5 spare.
• 64 boards: 70 guesses, 6 spare.
• 128 boards: 135 guesses, 7 spare.

What four letters changes

Each guess shows you four letters instead of five, so you learn less per turn, and short words have far more near neighbours. Most players find the 4-letter edition harder than the classic game at high board counts, even though the words themselves are simpler.

Word families

Four-letter words come in big rhyming families: BAKE, CAKE, FAKE, LAKE, MAKE, RAKE, TAKE, WAKE; or BOLD, COLD, FOLD, GOLD, HOLD, SOLD, TOLD. Three green letters can still leave six or seven answers.

On one board you can afford a test word that packs several of the changing letters together. On many boards, look for a certain answer elsewhere that happens to contain one of them before you spend a spare guess.

When to stop opening

Two openers with 8 different letters put clues on almost every board. After that, find a board whose answer is certain and enter it: you solve that board and add a row of clues to all the others.

At zero margin, every remaining guess has to solve a board for a full clear.

A scanning routine

Go through the boards in the same order each time and hide solved boards once the grid starts to thin out. Clear what is certain first, then return to the boards with few clues. The answers you entered in between may have settled them.