Wordle: what is online word game that went viral on Twitter, how to play it and what green block emojis mean

Wordle is an online brainteaser which lies somewhere between a crossword and a sudoku puzzle. Anyone who knows the game Mastermind, which employs the use of coloured pegs, will instantly be familiar with the premise of Wordle.

The objective of the game is to guess the secret word in six tries, using a series of hints to figure it out.

If any of your letters is highlighted as green, that means that you’ve got the right letter in the right place.

If any of the letters is highlighted as yellow, that means that that letter is in the word, but it’s in the wrong place.

Finally, if any of your letters is highlighted as grey, it means that that letter isn’t included anywhere in the secret word.

You have to enter a word as a guess, you cannot enter random letters, like the vowels, in hopes of cracking the code.

You can play Wordle on the Power Language website. There is only one puzzle released each day, so you’ll need to check the website again the following day to continue playing along.

What is hard mode?

Players have the option to take on the puzzle using hard mode - you can toggle this option on or off in the settings by hitting the cog icon in the upper right hand corner.

In the settings, users can also opt for a dark theme instead of the default white theme, and also a colour blind mode which offers high contrast colours.

Hard mode dictates that “any revealed hints must be used in subsequent guesses”.

That means that, for example, if you got the letters R and K correct in your first guess, you have to use those letters in the same spot for your subsequent guesses.

Because you have to play a real word and not just jumbled letters, users not playing on hard mode might try guessing a completely different word without using any of the letters they’ve solved in order to figure out the remaining letters - however in hard mode, you cannot do this.

What do the green block emojis on Twitter mean?

If you’ve noticed an increase of square green emojis on your Twitter timeline, it’s likely that a lot of accounts you follow have gotten involved with the Wordle craze.

Users are sharing how many tries it took for them to crack the puzzle Twitter, as, after it’s been solved, the website offers players the option to share their results.

This share option generates an emoji grid which replicates the colour pattern found on your completed puzzle, using the black, yellow and green emoji boxes.

If you don’t want to share your results through the website, you can always just post your own results using the same emojis.

Tweeting like this allows players to share their results entirely spoiler-free. Users will also include what number of Wordle it is and how many guesses they took, for example, “Wordle 187 4/6”.