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Clue-reading fundamentals

Wordle Color Meanings: Green, Yellow & Gray

Wordle color meanings become useful when you read the whole row: green fixes a letter in one position, yellow keeps the letter but rejects that position, and gray usually removes the letter—or an extra copy of it—from consideration.

By Unwordle.online Editorial Team · Tested and reviewed September 7, 2026

Turn colors into candidate words

Set all five tiles, enter a test guess, and compare the exact clue pattern against the dictionary.

Open the reverse Wordle solver

What each Wordle-style tile color means

Green

The letter belongs in this exact position.

Yellow

The letter is present, but not in this position.

Gray

The letter is absent, or this guessed copy exceeds the answer's count.

The color names describe the clue states, not a required screen shade. High-contrast themes may render them differently, but the positional rules stay the same.

How to read a complete clue row

Do not treat five tiles as five unrelated hints. A valid candidate must satisfy every position and letter count at once. Keep green positions fixed, move yellow letters away from their rejected positions, and exclude gray letters unless another copy of that letter received a positive clue.

For example, compare the candidate REACT with the answer CRANE:

PositionLetterClueWhat it tells you
1RYellowR is present, but not first
2EYellowE is present, but not second
3AGreenA is fixed in the middle
4CYellowC is present, but not fourth
5TGrayT is not in CRANE

The result is yellow–yellow–green–yellow–gray. Reading it as a sequence preserves more information than simply counting three yellow tiles.

Wordle yellow-letter rules in practice

A yellow letter must appear somewhere else in the answer. It cannot remain in the yellow position, and it must still fit around all greens. Multiple yellow letters can cross positions, so avoid locking them into the first arrangement that seems possible. Test the complete word against the complete row.

Why a repeated letter can be gray

Answers contain a limited number of each letter. When a guess repeats a letter more often than the answer does, the supported copies can be green or yellow while the extra copy becomes gray. Our duplicate-letter rules guide explains the two-pass calculation with APPLE and PUPPY.

A reliable clue-reading routine

  1. Copy the five colors in their original order.
  2. Fix every green letter and position.
  3. List yellow letters with the positions they cannot occupy.
  4. Remove unsupported gray letters and watch for repeated copies.
  5. Score each candidate against the row instead of relying on intuition.

Try the routine on today's Daily puzzle, or follow the seven tested reverse Wordle tips for harder patterns.

Method and scope

The worked row was checked with the same open browser scoring function used by Unwordle's games and solver. This guide explains the behavior of this site's Wordle-style implementation; it does not claim access to another publisher's private code or puzzle-selection process. Unwordle.online is independent and is not affiliated with the New York Times.

See third-party notices for dictionary licensing, or use Contact to report a reproducible error.