Wordle Double Letters: How Repeated Letters Get Colored

Wordle colors each copy of a repeated letter separately, and never lights up a letter more times than the answer has it. Copies in the right spot turn green first. Then the other copies are checked from left to right: each one turns yellow while the answer still has an unmatched copy of that letter, and any extra copy turns gray.

So a gray E next to a green E means the answer has exactly one E, and two yellow Es mean it has at least two. Below are five worked examples, how often answers repeat a letter (604 of the 1,895 answers in our game, 32%), and what we measured about when it pays to guess a double.

Every example here was checked against the scoring code of Word Guess, Poozee's free Wordle-style game, which colors repeated letters the same way Wordle does. Its answer list is our own, not Wordle's, so treat the counts as a guide to everyday five-letter words.

How repeated letters are colored

The game colors a guess in three steps:

1. Greens first. Every letter in the same spot as in the answer turns green.
2. Then yellows, left to right. Each remaining letter turns yellow if the answer still has a copy of it that hasn't been matched yet. Each yellow uses up one copy.
3. Everything else is gray. That includes a letter that is in the word, if the answer has no copy left for it.

Gray therefore means "no more copies of this letter", not always "this letter isn't in the word". The order matters too: because greens are claimed first, a later green can turn an earlier copy of the same letter gray.

Five examples

A double in your guess, a single in the answer

Neither E is in the right spot, so the first one, reading left to right, takes the answer's only E and turns yellow. The second E has nothing left to match and turns gray. You now know the answer has exactly one E, and it isn't in the third or fourth spot.

Green and gray of the same letter

HOTEL has one E and one L, and both are matched in place by the last two letters of LEVEL. The first L and the first E come earlier, but they still turn gray: greens are claimed before anything else. Green plus gray means exactly one copy, in the green spot.

A single in your guess, a double in the answer

You guessed one E, so you get one colored tile. A single yellow or green only tells you the answer has at least one E. Nothing on this row says whether there is a second.

Two yellows of the same letter

Two yellow Es mean the answer has two or more Es, and both copies belong somewhere other than where you put them. THEME has its Es in the third and fifth spots.

Yellow, green and gray at once

The E in the third spot is green. That leaves one more E in SLEEP, which goes to the first E still unmatched, reading left to right (the second spot), so it turns yellow. The last E is gray. Green plus yellow plus gray pins the count exactly: two Es.

What each combination tells you

The on-screen keyboard only shows each letter's best color so far. After LEVEL against HOTEL, the L and E keys are green even though one tile of each was gray, so read the counts from the tiles, not the keys.

Pro tip: A gray copy is the only way to learn a letter's exact count. If you need to know whether the answer has one E or two, a guess with two Es settles it.

In Word Guess's hard mode, counts carry forward: after EATEN shows two yellow Es, every later guess must contain two Es, and THEIR is rejected with "Guess must contain 2 Es". Our Wordle hard mode tips cover the rest of hard mode's rules.

How common are double letters?

We counted every answer in Word Guess's list of 1,895 familiar five-letter words:

• 604 answers (32%) repeat a letter. That's about one puzzle in three.
• 32 repeat two different letters, like LEVEL, LLAMA, KAYAK, TOOTH and QUEUE.
• 14 use one letter three times: DADDY, EERIE, ERROR, FLUFF, GEESE, MELEE, MOMMA, MOMMY, MUMMY, NANNY, POPPY, PUPPY, RARER and SASSY.

Which letters are doubled most

The last column is the useful one mid-game: once you've found an E, about 1 answer in 6 that has an E has a second one. For O it's about 1 in 8, and for L 1 in 10. Doubled H, U, W and Y are rare: only 1 of the 301 answers with a Y has two.

Side by side or apart

Repeated letters sit apart more often than side by side. In 239 answers the copies are always next to each other, like SKILL or KITTY, and in 339 they're always apart, like LEVEL or ALPHA. Another 26 have both, like GEESE or LLAMA.

The most common side-by-side pairs are EE, OO and LL:

When the copies are apart, the most common shapes are a letter in the 2nd and 5th spots (69 answers, like DENSE and BEIGE) and a letter in the first and last spots (65 answers, like ALPHA and ARENA).

Do double letters make the puzzle harder?

A little, and much more if your way of choosing guesses steers around them. We had a computer play all 1,895 answers, always opening with CRANE, and choosing each later guess in four ways:

• Best possible guesses: any of the 8,636 allowed words, picked to split the remaining answers into the smallest groups.
• Best fitting word: the same, but only words that could still be the answer.
• Most new letters: the fitting word with the most letters not guessed yet, a rule a person can follow (it's the one our hard mode guide recommends).
• New letters, then letters in place: the most-new-letters rule until 10 or fewer answers fit, then the fitting word that shares the most letters, spot for spot, with the others.

The table gives the average number of guesses in a win for answers with a repeated letter, for the others and for all answers, then the games lost out of 1,895 (in brackets, how many of those answers had a repeat):

Even perfect play needs about 0.2 more guesses on an answer with a repeated letter. But the most-new-letters rule pays far more: 0.54 extra guesses, and 8 of its 12 losses. The reason is simple. A word like SKILL has only four different letters, so the rule always ranks it below a word with five. In the 223 positions where some, but not all, of the possible answers repeated a letter, it guessed a repeated-letter word 0 times.

The best fitting word has no such bias. In its 201 positions like that, it guessed a repeated-letter word 81 times (40%), and repeated-letter words made up 40% of the possible answers on average. Picking the best guess simply ignores whether a word repeats a letter.

When to guess a double letter

Not as your opener

A repeated letter spends two tiles on one letter. We ranked all 8,636 allowed guesses by how many answers are still possible, on average, after playing them first. CRANE leaves 59.8. The best opener with a repeated letter, SAREE, ranks 338th and leaves 76.9, and familiar ones are far worse: SPEED leaves 194.9 and LLAMA 368.4. Our guide to the best Wordle starting words has openers that use five different letters.

Late in the game, treat doubles as full candidates

Once you're choosing among words that fit, a repeated letter is no reason to skip a word. When 10 or fewer words fit, switching from "most new letters" to "most letters in place" gave repeated-letter answers a fair turn: they dropped from 3.93 guesses to 3.66. It didn't make the games shorter overall (3.55 against 3.56 guesses); it just stopped the doubles from always coming last. One loss fewer is too small a gap to call a real difference.

Pro tip: When a few words fit and nothing has ruled out a repeat, list the doubles too. With E, O or L found, check whether a second copy fits before you guess.

Don't spend a probe just to test a double

In normal mode you can play a word that can't be the answer just to test letters. Allowing those probes saved the solver 0.14 guesses on answers without a repeat (3.45 down to 3.31), but only 0.06 on answers with one (3.56 down to 3.50). Save probes for spots like the _IGHT family, where one word can test several first letters at once. For a suspected double the gain is small, so a fitting word with the double in it is a fine test, and it might be the answer.

In hard mode, doubles aren't the trap

In our hard mode tests, words with a repeated letter were 32% of the answers and 30% of the losses when the computer picked any fitting word: no special risk. Word families and -ER endings cause most hard mode losses.

Wordle is a trademark of The New York Times Company, and Poozee isn't affiliated with it.

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