Secret Word online free
Secret Word is a Wordle-style deduction game: you get six tries to uncover a hidden five-letter word, and the colours on each guess tell you what to try next. This edition guesses English words and adds an endless mode to the daily puzzle. Two details of this version shape how you should play: the answer bank is small (220 words) and the game never checks your guesses against a dictionary.
History
Games that let you deduce a hidden code from feedback on positions go back decades; Mastermind in the 1970s and the TV show Lingo in the 1980s are famous examples. The one-word-a-day format with coloured tiles was created by software engineer Josh Wardle and released as Wordle in 2021, and The New York Times bought it in January 2022. Versions in many other languages followed, each with its own word list.
How to play
Type a five-letter word on your keyboard or on the on-screen one and press Enter. Each letter is coloured: green means right letter, right place; yellow means the letter is in the word but elsewhere; grey means the answer has no further copies of that letter. The on-screen keys follow along and always keep the best clue each letter has earned.
There are two modes. Word of the day gives everyone the same answer on the same day. Infinite draws a random word each game, and a New Word button starts another whenever you like. If you press Enter with letters missing, the row shakes and the game says "Not enough letters" without using up the try.
Rules
- 6 tries to find a word of 5 letters.
- A guess can be any string of 5 letters: the game has no dictionary check and does not reject invented words.
- Answers come from a bank of 220 English words, spelled with A to Z only.
- Two modes, Word of the day and Infinite, described further down.
Strategies
- Open with high-coverage letters. E, A, R, T, O and S lead this bank, and STARE and CRANE turn out to be strong openers here.
- Spend the second guess on fresh letters such as L, I, N, C and D, even when the string cannot be the answer.
- Position matters as much as presence. Yellow tells you the letter is not in that square. And remember that 23% of answers end in E and 15% in T.
- Suspect doubles when new letters cannot explain the open squares. 22% of answers repeat a letter, as in SHEEP or GRASS.
- Split instead of guessing near the end. With three or more look-alike candidates and at least two tries left, a probe word beats a coin flip.
How the colours treat repeated letters
The game scores each guess in two passes. First it turns every letter in its exact position green and subtracts it from the answer's letter count. Then, left to right, it turns a letter yellow only if some count is still left. Everything else goes grey. So grey does not mean the letter is absent; it can mean you bet on more copies than the word holds.
- Answer ROBOT, guess FLOOR: grey, grey, yellow, green, yellow. The word has two Os, so one O is green and the other yellow, and the R is yellow because it sits elsewhere.
- Answer CLOUD, guess LEVEL: yellow, grey, grey, grey, grey. CLOUD has a single L, which the first L uses up; the second L finds nothing left.
What the 220-word bank tells you
Because the bank is small and fixed, you can measure what it favours.
- Every answer has one to three of A, E, I, O, U: 67 have one, 139 have two and 14 have three. A word like AUDIO, with four, never appears as an answer.
- E leads, then A and R. E is in 110 of the 220 words (50%), A in 93 (42%) and R in 90 (41%), followed by T (73), O (72) and S (69).
- Endings and openings are lopsided. 51 words end in E and 33 in T; S starts 43 words, ahead of C (28) and F (23).
- Doubles are common: 48 words (22%) repeat a letter.
Which opener works best?
I scored every bank word as a first guess by counting how many answers remain possible once the colours come back. Among bank words, STARE comes out on top: it leaves 5.3 candidates on average, produces 74 different colour patterns, and its largest leftover group has 14 words. CRANE averages 5.6 and COAST 6.6. OCEAN, a popular vowel-heavy opener, averages 11.0, and AUDIO, with four vowels, 23.6, with a worst-case group of 51 words.
The reason is simple: with only one to three vowels per answer, the extra vowels in AUDIO rarely tell candidates apart, while R, S and T split the bank well. And since any string is accepted, your second guess does not have to be a real word.
Look-alike families: the endgame trap
The classic loss is reaching the last tries with four green letters and one open square. This bank has such families: _OUND holds BOUND, POUND, ROUND and SOUND; _IGHT holds EIGHT, LIGHT, NIGHT and SIGHT; there are also _RAIN, _LOCK, TR_CK and P_INT. In all, 76 of the 220 words (35%) have a neighbour that differs by a single letter.
The way out is a probe. For the _IGHT family, the guess PLANE gives four different readings: a yellow E means EIGHT, a yellow L means LIGHT, a yellow N means NIGHT, and no colour at all means SIGHT. One spent guess and the next is certain, instead of up to four guesses in a row.
Word of the day versus Infinite
- Word of the day: the answer depends on the day number counted in UTC and changes at 00:00 UTC, which is 7 pm in New York in winter and midnight in London in winter. Everyone gets the same word, and the sequence repeats every 220 days.
- Infinite: each game draws a random word with no memory of earlier ones, so repeats are possible. The New Word button appears only in this mode.
- In neither mode is a game in progress saved: reloading restarts the puzzle from scratch.
Tips for beginners
- Spend your first two guesses mapping different letters.
- Reread the on-screen key colours: they hold the best clue for every letter.
- Practise in Infinite mode instead of waiting for tomorrow.
Trivia
- The English bank has 220 words; the Portuguese and Spanish editions use 175 and 149.
- In a simulation where the player knows the whole bank and always picks, among bank words, the guess that cuts the possibilities most, every answer falls within 4 tries, averaging about 2.7.
- The grid of coloured squares became a way to share a result without giving the word away.
Mobile version
On a phone you type on the keyboard built into the page, a QWERTY layout with Enter and delete keys. It carries the colour clues, and the game never opens your system keyboard, so nothing covers the five-by-six grid. Both modes behave exactly as they do on a computer.
Frequently asked questions
How do I play Secret Word?
You have six tries to find a hidden five-letter word. After each guess the tiles turn green (right spot), yellow (in the word, wrong spot) or grey (the word has no more copies of that letter).
Can I guess words that do not exist?
Yes. The game only requires 5 letters and has no dictionary check, so any string counts as a guess and uses up a try.
How do repeated letters work with the colours?
Letters in the exact position turn green first; the leftovers turn yellow from left to right, up to the number of copies the answer holds. Everything else is grey.
When does the word of the day change?
At 00:00 UTC, which is 7 pm in New York in winter and midnight in London in winter. Every player gets the same word during that period.
Can I replay the word of the day?
The game does not save progress: if you reload the page, the word of the day restarts from zero with the same answer. In Infinite mode each New Word draws another.
What is the best starting word?
In this bank, STARE and CRANE leave the fewest candidates. AUDIO, despite its four vowels, leaves many.
Is the game in English?
On this page, yes: answers come from an English bank of 220 words. The Portuguese and Spanish editions have their own banks.
How is it different from Wordle?
The mechanic is the same: deduce the word from colour clues. Here the bank is small, guesses are not checked against a dictionary, and there is an Infinite mode.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. The game brings its own keyboard inside the page, with Enter and delete keys, so your phone keyboard never opens or covers the grid.