Word500: 8 Tries, Count-Only Clues — What It Is & Where to Play Free

What is Word500?

Word500 is a free daily word game for people who find Wordle a little too generous. You get eight tries to guess one secret five-letter word. After each guess the game tells you how many of your letters are in the word and how many are in the right place — but never which ones. The deduction is on you. There’s a new secret word every day, nothing to install, and no account.

How to play: 8 tries and three counts

Type a five-letter word and submit it. Three colored tiles light up to the right of your guess, and together they report counts:

• Green — how many of your letters are in the secret word and in the right position.
• Yellow — how many are in the secret word but in a different position.
• Red — how many aren’t in the secret word at all.

The game gives you a few tools for keeping track:

• Spacebar inserts an underscore placeholder, so you can sketch a pattern like P _ N _ S while you think.
• Click any letter tile to cycle its color — red, yellow, green, none — and mark up your own deductions. The Clear button wipes the markings.
• Hint generates a word that fits all your clues so far. It needs at least one guess first.

Word500 vs Wordle: counts instead of positions

This is the one thing to understand before your first game. In Wordle, every tile is a definite statement about one letter. In Word500, if the tiles say two letters hit, you still have to work out which two — and that ambiguity is the whole game. The official help page puts it simply: unlike Wordle, Word500 “only tells you the count.”

The extra tries help less than you’d think. Good Word500 play is about choosing guesses that change one or two letters at a time, so that a change in the counts points at a specific letter.

Practice mode: play Word500 unlimited

The daily is one word a day, but the official site also has a Practice mode — “play unlimited” — with as many secret words as you want, outside the daily. Same rules, no limit, free.

Archive: play past daily puzzles

Missed a day? The Archive lets you play past daily puzzles. It’s a place to play them, not a list of answers — you still solve each one yourself.

Languages and difficulty levels

Word500 isn’t English-only. It can be played in several languages, modes and difficulty levels, with a new secret word each day for each language and level. At Standard difficulty (the green smiley), the secret word never has repeated letters — no ORDER — and some letters are left out of the pool entirely. Worth knowing when a letter seems impossible to place.

Where to play Word500

Play it at word500.com, the official site. Daily, Practice, Archive and the how-to-play page all live there. It’s free and supported by ads.

Games like Word500

The first three are the ones Word500’s own site recommends. Sedecordle recommends Word500 right back.