Octordle Strategy: How to Win All 8 Boards in 13 Guesses

You have 13 guesses and eight secret words, so every guess has to do double duty. A good Octordle strategy is less about clever words and more about knowing where each guess goes. This guide gives you a simple plan, built on letter counts from the 894 answers in this game, plus the mistakes that quietly cost most players their run.

Start with the math: you have five spare guesses

Every board ends the same way: you type its exact word. That means eight of your 13 guesses are answer guesses, however well you play.

Only five guesses are left for scouting. Treat those five as your real budget, and stop thinking of 13 as a comfortable number.

Here is the trick most guides skip. A scouting guess that could also be a real answer is a free roll. If it hits, it solves a board, and if it misses, it still teaches you something on all eight boards.

A simple plan for all 13 guesses

1. Guesses 1 to 3, open wide. Play three words that share no letters. You do not need to think yet.
2. Guesses 4 to 7, narrow down. Play words that fit at least one board and test fresh letters on the others.
3. Guesses 8 to 11, close boards. When a board has one or two candidates left, cash it in.
4. Guesses 12 and 13, finish. Every guess here should be an exact answer, so count your boards before you type.

Practice the plan in unlimited Octordle, where a rough game costs you nothing.

Open with three words that cover 15 letters

Your first three words should share no letters. Fifteen different letters is a lot of coverage for three guesses.

In this game's word list, the strongest fifteen-letter set is S, P, A, C, E, L, I, G, H, T, R, O, U, N and D, which are the fifteen most common letters. Words like grind, place and shout use exactly those letters, and they give the most green tiles of any set that does. Together they reveal about 85 percent of the distinct letters in a typical answer.

Our list of the best Octordle starting words shows more sets, with the numbers behind each one.

Decide which board to chase

After your openers, do not stare at one board. Rank them instead:

• Boards with three or more green letters come first, because one guess can finish them.
• Boards with two candidate words left come second. Each costs at most two guesses.
• Boards with almost nothing come last. Other guesses will feed them letters for free.

Every board you close makes the rest easier to read. Solved boards go blank on the key markers, so the markers that remain describe only the boards still in play. If the eight markers are new to you, the how to play guide explains them.

A guess-by-guess example

Say you open with GRIND, PLACE and SHOUT. On board 6, GRIND shows a yellow R and nothing else. PLACE shows nothing at all, which rules out P, L, A, C and E. SHOUT adds a green S, a green O and a yellow T.

That board now reads S _ O _ _, with R and T hiding elsewhere, and G, I, N, D, H and U are ruled out too. Type those clues into the word finder and it shows two likely answers, STORM and STORY. It also lists STORK, which the game accepts as a guess but never picks as an answer.

Do not guess either one blindly. Check your other boards first, and if STORM also tests new letters there, play it. If it misses, STORY is the only likely answer left, and you finish next turn.

This board cost two guesses, and both guesses scouted the other seven boards.

Scout the letters your opener skipped

A fifteen-letter opener leaves B, F, J, K, M, Q, V, W, X, Y and Z untested. Ignore J, Q, X and Z at first, since each appears in only one or two percent of answers.

The rest are worth testing. B, M and Y each appear in 11 percent of answers, F and W in 9 percent, K in 8 percent and V in 7 percent. A word like MAYBE tests three of them in one guess, which makes it a strong fourth word when your boards stay quiet.

Beat the look-alike traps

Some patterns hide a long list of candidates. A board that reads _ATCH could be CATCH, MATCH, PATCH, WATCH, BATCH, HATCH or LATCH.

Guessing them one at a time can eat five guesses. Play a word that tests several first letters at once instead, such as CHIMP. A green C points to CATCH, and a yellow M or P narrows the rest. Every other board learns something too.

The same trick works on _IGHT boards, where EIGHT, FIGHT, LIGHT, MIGHT, NIGHT, RIGHT, SIGHT and TIGHT all fit.

Know when every guess must be an answer

Before each guess after your seventh, count two numbers: open boards and guesses left.

When they match, you have no spare guesses. Every remaining guess has to be the exact word of a different board, so stop scouting and start finishing. If you have more guesses than boards, you can still afford one scouting word.

Read double letters with care

About 27 percent of answers repeat a letter, so double letters catch many players out. When your guess repeats a letter, read the two tiles together.

If one copy is colored and the other is gray, the word has exactly one copy of that letter. If both copies are colored, the word has at least two.

For example, guess SPEED on a board that hides SHADE. The S is green, the P is gray, the first E is yellow, the second E is gray and the D is yellow. That gray second E tells you SHADE has only one E.

Three mistakes that cost games

• Chasing one board. Six guesses on a single board leave seven boards with almost no information.
• Repeating letters in your openers. A repeated letter tests nothing new. In our count, an opening set with overlaps found 3.55 letters of a typical answer, while a clean fifteen-letter set found 4.01.
• Treating a gray tile as a global ban. Gray speaks for one board only. The same letter can be green on another board.

Is Octordle luck or skill?

Luck plays a small part. Some days you draw more look-alike words than others, and a strong opener cannot save every game.

Still, most lost games trace back to planning errors, not bad draws. Keep your guess count in view, close boards early, and test your ideas on fresh boards before you risk your daily streak on the daily Octordle.

Frequently asked questions