How to play Wordtallyo
4 min read
The whole game is one rule, and you can have it in a sentence: you are told how many of your letters are right, and never which ones they are.
The two numbers
Guess any real word of the right length. The game answers with a pair of tallies:
- Hits — letters that are in the answer and in the position you put them.
- Near — letters that are in the answer but in a different position.
Say the answer is BELOW and you guess CRANE. One letter of CRANE appears in BELOW: the E. You put it fourth; in BELOW it is second. So the reply is 0 hits, 1 near. It does not say E. It does not say fourth. It says one, and the rest is your problem.
| Answer | Your guess | Hits | Near | What you learn |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BELOW | CRANE | 0 | 1 | Exactly one of C R A N E is in the word, in a position you did not try |
| BELOW | BLOKE | 1 | 3 | Four of those five letters are in the word, but only one is placed |
| BELOW | ELBOW | 2 | 3 | Every letter is right and three are still in the wrong place |
The three boards
| Board | Letters | Guesses | Repeated letters | Scored |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | 4 | 10 | Never in the answer | No |
| Regular | 5 | 8 | Never in the answer | Yes |
| Hard | 6 | 8 | Possible, and not flagged | Yes |
Easy gets ten guesses and carries no score at all — no points draining while you think, no leaderboard, no clock. It is the board to start on, and the board to hand someone who has never played. It is also, for a reason worth its own post, genuinely the hardest of the three.
On Easy and Regular the answer never repeats a letter, so a repeat in your own guess is a wasted slot. On Hard the answer may repeat a letter and the tally will not warn you.
How scoring works
On the two scored boards, a solved run is worth:
- A base amount for solving at all.
- A bonus for every guess you did not need.
- A time bonus worth about one guess, which drains as the clock runs.
- All of it multiplied down if you took a hint.
The running total sits beside the board while you play, along with what the next guess will cost, so you can see the trade before you spend it rather than afterwards. An unsolved run scores zero.
Hints
One hint gives you the answer’s definition. A second narrows it further. Both are available on every board, both are recorded on your share card, and both reduce the score rather than voiding it — a hinted solve still counts for your streak.
Assist mode
Assist counts how many words are still consistent with every tally you have received, and flags scratchpad marks that no remaining word can satisfy. It runs entirely in your browser and never sees the answer. It is also a solver, so any run that used it is flagged and ranked on a separate board.
The daily puzzle
One puzzle per day, one run per puzzle, no restarts. The day turns over at your local midnight rather than an hour chosen in another timezone, and everyone gets the same word for the same puzzle number.
When you finish, the share card shows the shape of your run — a tally for each guess — and never a letter, so it is always safe to paste. You can also generate a seed: a link to one specific word that gives everyone who opens it the same board, any time, unranked.
Four things that help immediately
- Do not repeat a letter in your opening guess. It asks about fewer letters and the worst openers in the dictionary are all repeats.
- Use the scratchpad. Tap a letter in a past guess to mark it as placed, present, or absent. Nothing is filled in for you here, and holding six constraints in your head is where most runs are lost.
- Spend a guess on information. A word that cannot be the answer but tests five new letters is often worth more than a plausible guess that tests two.
- Expect to feel lost after guess one. The best five-letter opener in the entire dictionary still leaves about seventy candidates standing. That is the game working as designed, not you playing badly.
Common questions
How do you play Wordtallyo?
Guess a word. The game replies with two numbers: how many of your letters are in the right place, and how many are in the answer but somewhere else. It never tells you which letters those are. Keep guessing until you find the word or run out of guesses. There is one new puzzle each day, and everyone gets the same word.
What do the two numbers mean?
The first number counts letters that are in the right place. The second counts letters that appear in the answer but not in the position you put them. A letter is only ever counted once, and the two numbers together can never exceed the length of the word.
How is it different from Wordle?
Wordle colours each letter of your guess, so you learn which letters are right and where. Wordtallyo gives you only the counts. You learn how many, never which ones, so all of the deduction stays with you.
Is Wordtallyo free?
Yes. There is nothing to pay and no account required. The daily puzzle, practice mode, the leaderboard and the stats page are all free to use, and nothing in the game is held back for anyone who plays anonymously.
How many guesses do you get?
Ten on the four-letter board, and eight on the five-letter and six-letter boards. The limits are uneven because they were measured rather than chosen: each is the ninetieth percentile of a solver working through every answer in the pool, plus one.
When does the puzzle reset?
At midnight in your own timezone, not at an hour picked somewhere else. Everyone receives the same word for the same puzzle number; you simply reach it when your own day turns over.