Worldle: How to Play, and How Every Clue Works

How to play Worldle

Worldle is a daily geography puzzle where you guess a mystery country or territory from its silhouette. You type a name, submit it, and get three clues back: how far away you are, which way to look, and a proximity percentage. You have six attempts, and a new puzzle appears every day at midnight in your device’s local time zone.

Antoine Teuf, a French web developer, created Worldle; the Teuteuf company now continues it. The daily puzzle runs in your browser with no download.

1. Look at the silhouette. There are no labels, and no scale bar to tell you how big the country is.
2. Type a guess. It must be a valid country or territory name.
3. Read the three clues that come back after every guess.
4. Narrow it down. Six guesses in total, so use each clue to halve the map rather than guess at random.
5. Share. When you finish, the share button copies a grid of coloured squares that does not reveal the answer.

What each clue means

• Distance in kilometres or miles. Guess France and see 2,500 km with an arrow pointing east, and the target is roughly that far east of France.
• Direction, an arrow from your guess towards the target. Treat it as “roughly this way”.
• Proximity percentage. 0% means the opposite side of the world, 100% means correct. Watch whether the number is climbing; that is your real signal.

What the 🟩 🟨 ⬛ squares mean

The squares in your share grid are the proximity percentage drawn visually. Worldle rounds the percentage down to the nearest ten and shows five squares: each green square is 20%, each yellow square is 10%, and black squares fill whatever is left. So 72% becomes 🟩🟩🟩🟨⬛.

Why the arrow doesn’t point exactly at the answer

There are only eight arrow directions, so the game chooses the closest one, which can be a few degrees off. According to the FAQ, the arrow will never route you across the North or South Pole.

How distance is measured

Distances are computed between the centres of your guess and the target, not between their nearest borders. Two countries that share a long border can therefore still show a gap of hundreds of kilometres. The number also hints at how large the target is. Globle works the other way: it measures to the nearest land border.

Bonus rounds: what unlocks after the daily puzzle

Completing the main round unlocks bonus rounds. The official FAQ names neighbors, capital, flag and additional trivia; finish the main puzzle to open the first, then pick the others from the dropdown.

Is Worldle free? Archive and Practice Mode

The daily puzzle is free. Playing past puzzles is the paid part: the archive needs a Teuteuf Games account and a Premium membership. The official site also has a separate Practice Mode that matches countries with maps, flags, languages and more, earning XP and unlocking new subjects as you go. Its FAQ does not say whether Practice is free or Premium, so check the live site.

The official site lists the daily puzzle, an archive and Practice; it has no mode called unlimited. If you want another round right now, see our list of games like Worldle.

Why some places never show up as answers

Worldle follows the ISO 3166-1 standard. Scotland, Puerto Rico and Hong Kong are treated as parts of larger nations, so they are not valid answers. Some names are simplified for recognisability: the game says “Vatican City” rather than “Holy See”.

How the daily country is chosen

The pick is random, with three rules from the official FAQ:

• Countries smaller than 5,000 km² don’t repeat within 7 days.
• No country repeats within 100 days.
• Neighbouring days avoid the same continent for Africa and Asia.

Worldle vs Wordle

One letter apart, nothing else shared. Wordle is about words, created by Josh Wardle and now owned by The New York Times. Worldle is about country shapes and distances. Both are daily puzzles with a shareable grid of coloured squares.

Tips to improve your score

• Start broad. A first guess that tells you the continent is worth a lot.
• Study silhouettes. Coastlines, island chains and odd borders are the usual giveaways.
• Mind the scale. The outline has no scale bar. If thinking small gets you nowhere, think bigger.
• Use all three clues together. Distance plus arrow gives a direction and a radius.
• Play other map games such as Travle and WhenTaken, and keep a world map handy.

Games like Worldle

Globle hides a mystery country behind a hot-and-cold globe, and Travle asks you to travel between two countries in as few hops as possible. We have collected the closest matches in free daily games like Worldle.

Find your next puzzle in the daily game directory or browse our daily word games by type.