How to play Linguo

Linguo is a word-guessing game: you have six tries to find a hidden word, and after each try the letters are coloured to show how close you are. It rewards both vocabulary and logical deduction, and you can play it in eight languages.

The rules

1. Choose a language and a word length of 4, 5 or 6 letters. A hidden word of that length is picked at random.
2. Type a guess with your keyboard or the on-screen keys and press Enter. Every guess must be a real word of the right length from the word list; otherwise the row shakes and you can try another.
3. After each guess the tiles change colour. Green: the letter is in the word, in that exact spot. Orange: the letter is in the word, but somewhere else. Grey: the letter is not in the word (or not as many times as you used it).
4. Find the word within six guesses to win. Either way, the word is then shown with a short description.

Repeated letters follow a precise rule: green matches are counted first, and orange is given only to copies the hidden word still has left. If the answer has one E and you guess a word with two, one E is coloured and the other turns grey.

Getting started

Take a 5-letter English game. A good opening guess uses five different, common letters, for example STARE. Suppose the result is: S grey, T grey, A orange, R green, E grey. You now know that R is the fourth letter, the word contains an A that is not in the third position, and S, T and E are out. The on-screen keyboard keeps track: R is green, A orange, and S, T and E grey.

Your second guess should honour all of that while testing new letters. CHARM puts A in third place, which you know is wrong, so try something like CAIRN: A in second place, R still fourth, plus three fresh letters. Each row cuts the possibilities further, until only one word fits.

Strategies and tips

• Open with common letters. Vowels and frequent consonants such as R, S, T, L and N give the most information early. Which letters are common depends on the language, so adjust when you switch.
• Do not waste letters you have ruled out. Grey keys on the keyboard are dead. Reusing them tells you nothing new.
• Move orange letters. An orange letter belongs somewhere else. Each guess should try it in a new position, which pins it down quickly.
• Remember double letters. If you are short of candidates, the answer may contain a letter twice, like the two Ls in LLAMA.
• Sometimes probe instead of guessing. If several words fit, say BAKER, MAKER and TAKER, a guess that tests B, M and T at once can be smarter than trying the candidates one by one.
• Think in nouns. Any valid word is accepted as a guess, including verbs and plurals, but the hidden word is always a noun in its basic form.

How the difficulty adapts

Linguo does not adjust itself; you set the challenge with two choices. The word length changes the game more than you might expect: a 6-letter word has more letters to place, while a 4-letter word gives less feedback per guess and often has many close neighbours, so it is not automatically easier. Playing in a language you are still learning is another way to raise the bar, since you have to recall vocabulary as well as reason about letters.

Whatever you choose, try to keep it slightly uncomfortable. The brain benefits most when the challenge keeps rising with your skill, and a puzzle that is always a little hard is better training than one you solve on autopilot. See what research says about puzzles and brain health.

A short history of Linguo

The idea of deducing a hidden code from coloured feedback goes back to the board game Mastermind, released in the early 1970s, and to older pencil-and-paper games with words. Television turned it into a word game with Lingo, which started in the United States in 1987. The Dutch version, which began in 1989, became one of the longest-running quiz shows in the Netherlands. In the TV game, the first letter of the word is usually given away; in Linguo you start with nothing.

The format had a worldwide revival with Wordle, a free web game by Josh Wardle that became a global craze in early 2022. Linguo follows the same colour logic but lets you play as many words as you like, in several languages and lengths.

Frequently asked questions