Dordle solver

CRANE is one guess but two different sets of colours. On board 1 it cuts the list to 53 words; on board 2, where it found less, 139 remain. SLOTH then tests five new letters and leaves 2 and 3 words. With so few left, the suggested next guesses start with words that can finish a board: PLANT, ALANT, PARIS, SHIPS.

Dordle is Wordle on two boards at once. You get seven guesses to find two five-letter words, and every guess you type is played on both boards. Each board colours it separately: green for the right letter in the right spot, yellow for a letter that is in that board's word but elsewhere, grey for a letter that is not in it.

Entering a game

Add your first guess. It appears on both boards as grey tiles. Tap tiles on board 1 until they match your game ( grey → yellow → green), then do the same on board 2. Once a board shows a row of five greens it is marked solved and stops taking new guesses. Remove last guess undoes a row on both boards; Start over clears the sample game.

How words are kept or dropped

For every word in our five-letter list (8,636 words), the solver works out the colours your guess would have shown if that word were the answer, using the game's own rules: greens first, then yellows from left to right, each answer letter used once. A word stays on a board only if it reproduces every row you entered there. Because the check replays the real scoring, repeated letters come out right. Guess EERIE against a word with one E and only one E lights up; the solver knows the other Es mean "no more Es".

Lists are sorted by how common each word is in English. The 2,817 common five-letter words come first; rarer ones are shown faded, since daily answers are usually everyday words.

The best next guess

The suggestions are scored on both unsolved boards together. While the lists are long, a word earns points for letters that appear in about half of the remaining words on a board, because those letters split the list best. Once the lists are short, the solver counts how many different colour patterns each candidate guess would produce on each board and adds them up. A board with one or two words left always puts those words first, since playing them can win the board outright.

Dordle tips

Seven guesses for two words is just one more than a single Wordle allows, so there is little slack. Spend guesses two and three on fresh letters for both boards rather than chasing one answer early. As soon as one board is down to two or three words, solve it: it costs at most two turns and its greens and greys often help the other board. A grey letter on one board says nothing about the other board, which is where most entry mistakes come from.

Our word list is the public-domain ENABLE list (172,823 words). It is close to, but not the same as, Dordle's own word list, so an odd word may appear here that the game rejects.