What Is Hard Mode in Wordle? Rules, Example, and How to Turn It On

How the rule changes your next guess

In normal mode, you can submit another valid five-letter word even if it ignores a green or yellow clue. Some players do this to test several new letters at once. Hard Mode removes that option: your next guess must respect information the board has already revealed.

A green tile identifies both a letter and its exact position, so keep it in that slot. A yellow tile identifies a letter that belongs in the word but not in the slot where you tried it. Hard Mode requires you to reuse the revealed letter; moving it away from its known-wrong position is the logical way to search for the answer. If the same letter has been tried in more than one position, read the full board before deciding where it can go.

Gray tiles still provide useful information for solving, but do not confuse “using revealed hints” with a promise that every remaining guess must be a possible final answer. A guess can obey the enforced green and yellow clues yet still be a poor choice. You must continue to reason about eliminated letters, repeated letters, and the candidates left on your own board.

A concrete Hard Mode example

Suppose the hidden practice word is CRANE and you open with TRACE. This is a made-up board, not a hint for today's puzzle. The R, A, and E turn green in positions two, three, and five. The C turns yellow in position four: C belongs somewhere in the answer, but not there. T is gray.

Your next Hard Mode guess must keep _ R A _ E and include C. To be a possible answer, it should also move C away from position four. CRANE satisfies those clues: C moves to position one, the green letters stay put, and the word is solved. A probe guess such as SOUND might test new letters in normal mode, but it discards the confirmed R, A, and E and omits C, so it does not follow the Hard Mode rule.

The point is not that CRANE will always be obvious after one guess. Hard Mode forces you to build on earlier feedback, even when you would rather spend a turn collecting unrelated letter information. As green positions accumulate, the remaining spaces and allowed letters may become more constrained.

How to turn on Hard Mode

1. Open the official Wordle game on the web or in a New York Times app that offers Wordle.
2. Select the settings icon, shown as a cog at the top of the game.
3. Find Hard Mode and turn it on. Return to the board to play under the stricter guess rule.

The New York Times lists Hard Mode under Wordle Settings. If you do not see the control where expected, use the game's own help or settings screen for the interface on your device. Hard Mode is an optional setting in Wordle, not a separate daily puzzle and not a setting on our word finder.

Is Hard Mode actually harder?

It restricts your choices, but that does not mean every individual guess is harder to think of. Many players already carry green and yellow clues forward without being required to. For them, the setting mainly prevents accidentally submitting a guess that ignores an established clue.

The trade-off appears when you want to use a “probe” word to inspect fresh letters. In normal mode, you can spend a guess on such a word even if it cannot be the answer. In Hard Mode, the probe must also honor the clues you already have. Depending on the board, that may leave fewer ways to test unfamiliar letters. Neither setting guarantees a better result; use the one that matches how you want to solve.

Using a word finder without confusing it with Hard Mode

Our 5 Letter Word Finder can help you organize the same clues before your next guess. Enter green letters in their numbered positions. Put each yellow letter under the position where it was tried, indicating that it must appear elsewhere. Add letters you have confidently ruled out in the exclude field, then review the matching words.

For the TRACE example, enter R, A, and E in positions two, three, and five; put C in the yellow field for position four; and exclude T. The resulting list is a set of candidates from our own database, not an official Wordle answer list or a guarantee that every word will be accepted by the game. Check the board and the game's feedback yourself before submitting a guess.

If you are still learning what green, yellow, and gray mean, start with our beginner Wordle guide. The finder is most useful when it makes your reasoning clearer, not when it replaces it.