Knowing what words are included in Wordle will help you understand why some words are used as answers and others are never used. It will also tell you why the game remains fresh even after years of being played every day. There are two separate lists of words.

Two Word Lists

There are two lists of words:

Answer List - Words that can be used as the Wordle answer every day

Valid Guess List - Words that are acceptable to guess but cannot be the answer.

The answer list will include some words from the valid guess list. Some words in the valid guess list may not be fair to use as answers since they are not common.

Answer List

Josh Wardle initially created an answer list consisting of around 2,300 5-letter English words. He selected words which were commonly known to most adults who speak English.

When the New York Times took over Wordle in January 2022 they changed a lot of the words in the answer list. They:

Removed obscure words that may not be known by even educated native English speakers

Removed politically sensitive words that could cause issues

Removed any potentially offensive words

They also appointed Tracy Bennett as Puzzle Editor to oversee the selection process.

The answer list contains around the same amount of words as before (around 2,300) but they are actively managed by the NYT.

Valid Guess List

The valid guess list is much larger. It contains over 10,000 5-letter English words. This includes obscure, old-fashioned and technical words. These words are recognised as real English words but will never be used as answers. Occasionally you may find words you didn’t know existed.

It is important to have a large list of valid guesses so people can’t abuse the system by using random letters. All guesses must be real words. However the valid guess dictionary is long so those with a wider vocabulary aren’t limited.

How the answers are chosen

The NYT do not randomly choose the Wordle answers each day. Instead there is a set list of answers programmed into the game. This means that there are no duplicate answers and the puzzle editor can manage the progression. They can ensure that the answers aren’t too hard or too similar to each other.

However, the answers are set so someone with determination could look at the source code and see what the future answers are. While the NYT have tried to make this more difficult to do, most people believe this is cheating.

Frequency of Words

The NYT use an unofficial criteria to decide what words go into the answer list. The Wordle answer should be:

A word most adults who speak English would know

Not a proper noun

No hyphenated words or words with apostrophes

Not slang or overly technical

Only one spelling

This is why sometimes you may struggle with a word. A fair word in Wordle means it is commonly used in written English.

Full Answer List

Technically the full answer list can be found in the JavaScript of the game. This means developers can view the list. The list has been pulled from third party websites meaning there are predictors and archives available. While the NYT have changed how the words are encoded, they have not really hidden them.

To put it simply if you learn some common everyday 5-letter English words then you will be well prepared for almost any Wordle answer the puzzle editor chooses.