Wordle Helper

You have probably seen the game Wordle. It was created in 2021 by Josh Wardle as a game for his partner. The game became a hit on the Internet, and the New York Times acquired it for its Game section. The premise is to guess the five-character word by entering a guess in the first row, seeing the results of that guess, and entering another guess until the correct word is entered. At each step, the game indicates which letters are in the answer and in the correct location, and which letters are in the final answer but in the wrong location.

We created Wordle Helper to assist with game play. It does not let you cheat; That's easy enough to do with a simple online search. It just saves some time and energy with the tasks you might already be doing. If you really love playing Wordle by yourself and want to get the maximum brain exercise, don't use Wordle Helper to help with the online puzzle but you will definitely find it rewarding in solitaire mode. If you are playing with a group and want to have a bit of an advantage without cheating, then use Wordle Helper. All it does is, given the guesses already made, list all possible answers sorted by how likely each might be the final answer. You must still select the next guess from that list.

Here is one player's statistics after playing 645 games with Wordle Helper:

That distribution looks pretty good! How does it compare to yours?

What It Does

• As guesses are entered, it calculates all the possible remaining words that can be the answer based on which letters are in the final answer and in the correct location, which letters are in the final answer but in the wrong location, and which letters are not in the final answer at all.
• Past answers are filtered out unless instructed otherwise. Note that this rule changed on February 2, 2026, when the NYT decided to start recycling old answers every now and then to keep us on our toes.
• The list is sorted by how likely the word might be the answer based on the frequency of use of the various letters in all possible words.

Formula Magic

We looked at the various Excel-based Wordle assistants on the Internet and they all looked clunky and didn't really provide much assistance. We wanted to create something that is as easy to use as possible, provides as much actual assistance as possible when choosing the next word, and provides a fully functional solitaire version of the game.

• Suggested word list excludes previously used words unless directed otherwise.
• Suggested word list defaults to the original list of 2,309 possible Wordle words curated by the original creator, unless directed otherwise.
• Suggested words are sorted by how effective the word will be in providing clues for the next guess. This is done by using a table of letter frequency in all known five-letter words and the frequency the word appears in written text. These suggestions are in the Letter Freq column and the Word Freq columns respectively.
• Automatically loads the complete list of previously used words from the Internet.

How To Use

Open Wordle Helper. A dialog will be displayed if the list of used words is out of date (it is updated daily at 4 AM ET, 1 AM PT) asking to update the list. Click Yes.

The game play area:

Enter the first guess in row 1 by double-clicking a word in the Letter Freq or Word Freq lists, or entering the word directly. Do the same in the New York Times game. Apply the New York Times displayed results into the workbook cells below the last entered word. Enter C if the letter is in the final answer and in the correct location, W if the letter is in the final answer but the wrong location, and leave blank for any letter not in the final answer.

Wordle Helper filters and display all the possible remaining words in the list at the bottom of the play area. Repeat the process for each subsequent guess.

In the above example, each of the two initial guesses were the first word in the Letter Freq list. At this point there is only one suggestion, and it was the answer for that day's puzzle.

This is how most people use Wordle Helper:

• With a clear board, double-click the word from the list at the bottom. Only words from the second (Letter Freq) and third (Word Freq) columns can be double-clicked. Or manually enter the next guess into the grey cells.
• Enter that word into the New York Times game and press Enter.
• Transcribe the results into Wordle Helper by entering into the clear cells below the word: C if the letter is in the final answer and the correct location (green cell in Wordle), W if the letter is in the final answer but the wrong location (yellow cell in Wordle), and leave blank for any letter not in the final answer.
• Repeat for the next guess in row 2 and so on.

Commands

• Refresh Ctrl+Shift+R – Refreshes the list of used words.
• Undo Ctrl+Shift+Z – Clears the last guess and results entered.
• Clear Ctrl+Shift+C – Clears all guesses and results entered.
• Practice Ctrl+Shift+P – Pulls a random word from a master list of all legitimate five-letter words and lets you play the game locally without the New York Times game.
• Close – Closes Wordle Helper.
• Source – A dropdown with three choices: Wordle List (the original list of 2,309 words curated by the Wordle creator, excluding all past used words), Extended List (the complete list of all known five-letter valid Scrabble words, excluding all past used words), and All Words (the complete list of all five-letter words including previously used words).

Tips

• If the list of possible answers is empty, first check to make sure you have entered all the guesses and results correctly.
• Next, switch to Extended List to see more possible guesses.
• Finally, select All Words to include past used words. As of July 2026, a previously used word has been used only a few times.