Octordle

Octordle takes the single-board guessing game and multiplies it by eight: every day it hides eight different five-letter words, and you have to crack all of them inside thirteen shared guesses. Each word you type is scored on all eight grids at once, so the same guess can move you forward on one board while telling you almost nothing on another. It is one of the most demanding members of the daily word-game family, rewarding planning over speed.

What is Octordle?

Octordle is a daily word puzzle in which you try to identify eight hidden five-letter words at the same time. Unlike a single-grid game where one answer is the whole challenge, here your screen is split into eight separate boards, and every guess you enter is applied to all of them in parallel. You get thirteen total guesses to clear all eight, which is only five more attempts than there are words to find, so there is very little room to waste a turn. The puzzle changes once per day, and everyone playing that day works on the same eight words.

What sets Octordle apart from other multi-grid word games is the sheer cognitive load of tracking eight boards from a single input. A guess that scores three greens on one grid might be almost useless on another, and you constantly have to decide whether to chase a board that is nearly finished or feed information to the ones still wide open. This juggling act is the whole appeal. It turns a familiar five-letter format into an exercise in efficient deduction, where the order you tackle the boards in and how much information each guess buys you matter more than vocabulary alone.

Octordle was created by Kenneth Crawford and launched in mid-January 2022. Rather than springing directly from Wordle, it extended the multi-grid idea that earlier variants such as Dordle and Quordle had already introduced, pushing the simultaneous-board concept up to eight grids at once. It is hosted on Merriam-Webster's games section, alongside the dictionary publisher's other daily word puzzles, which gives it a stable home and a clean, no-frills interface. Over time the game grew beyond a single daily board into a small family of modes: the standard Daily, where you solve the eight words in any order across shared guesses; a Daily Sequence, where the boards must be solved one at a time in a fixed order; and a Daily Rescue, which also plays out one board at a time but starts you with opening words the game has chosen, leaving you to recover from whatever position that hands you. Lighter and harder variants exist as well, adjusting the guess count and word difficulty.

Feedback follows the convention players already know: a green tile means the letter is correct and in the right position, yellow means the letter is in that word but elsewhere, and gray means the letter does not appear in that particular word. Because each board scores your guess independently, the same letter can light up differently across the eight grids. When you finish, Octordle produces a shareable grid of colored squares and your guess count that you can post without spoiling the answers. The vibe is patient and methodical rather than quick and casual, and it tends to suit people who already breezed through simpler word games and want a stiffer, more strategic daily challenge.

How to play Octordle

1. Open the daily Octordle and note the eight separate five-letter boards, all of which you solve from a single guess box.
2. Type any valid five-letter word and submit it; the guess is scored on all eight grids at the same time.
3. Read the color feedback on each board individually: green for a correct letter in the correct spot, yellow for a correct letter in the wrong spot, and gray for a letter that is absent from that word.
4. Use what you learn to plan a next word that advances as many unsolved boards as you can, rather than locking onto just one.
5. Lock in each word as you identify it while keeping the remaining boards in view, and watch your shared guess counter.
6. Solve all eight words before your thirteen guesses are used up, then share or save your color-grid result.

Tips and strategy

• Spend your first two or three guesses on words that cover many common, distinct letters across all five positions, since broad coverage helps every board at once when nothing is solved yet.
• Once a board shows several greens, finish it promptly so you have fewer grids to track for the rest of the puzzle.
• Be careful with guesses meant to confirm a single near-complete board, because that word still consumes a turn on all eight grids and may stall the others.
• Hold a couple of letters you have not tested yet in reserve, then deploy a guess that introduces several of them at once to the boards that are still blank.
• Read all eight rows after every guess before deciding your next word, since a letter that is gray on most boards may be the key clue on one of them.
• In Daily Sequence and Daily Rescue, where boards are solved one at a time, plan differently: only one board is active at a time, so play tighter, more confirming guesses instead of broad information-gathering ones.

Good to know

Words per puzzle

8 five-letter words

Guesses

13 (standard Daily mode)

Resets

New puzzle daily

Cost

Free to play

Creator

Kenneth Crawford

Platform

Browser, hosted on Merriam-Webster's games section

Octordle FAQ

How many guesses do you get in Octordle?

In standard Daily Octordle you get thirteen guesses to solve all eight words. Other modes change this: Daily Sequence, where you solve one word at a time in order, typically gives you more attempts, and Daily Rescue uses fewer of your own guesses since the game fills in some opening words for you.

Is Octordle free?

Yes. Octordle is free to play in a web browser, with a new daily puzzle and no required purchase.

When does Octordle reset?

Octordle posts a fresh set of eight words once per day, so a new puzzle is available each day. Everyone playing that day faces the same eight words.

Is there an Octordle archive?

Yes, past Octordle puzzles can be revisited, so if you miss a day you can go back and play earlier daily boards rather than only the current one.

Is Octordle related to Wordle?

Octordle uses the same five-letter, color-coded guessing format that Wordle popularized, but it is its own game created by Kenneth Crawford. It built on earlier multi-grid variants such as Dordle and Quordle, running eight boards at once from a single shared set of guesses, which makes it considerably harder.