How the colors work with repeated letters in Wordle

Wordly team · Roghan Games · October 19, 2026

Most players know that green means “right letter, right place” and yellow means “right letter, wrong place”. The confusing part is what happens when a word has a repeated letter. The rule is simple, but it is easy to get wrong in your head, so here it is with examples. The colors below are produced by the same code that runs the game.

The rule, in order

First, every letter that is in the correct place becomes green, and that letter is “used up” in the answer.
Then, going from left to right, each remaining letter becomes yellow only if the answer still has an unused copy of it. Each yellow uses up one copy.
Anything left over becomes gray.

Example 1: a letter the answer has only once

Suppose the answer is AMIGO and you guess ARARA:

Only the first A is green. The other two A's are gray.

AMIGO has just one A, and the green A in the first slot already uses it. That is why the other two A's turn gray even though the letter exists in the word. Gray does not always mean “this letter is not in the word”; it can also mean “there are no more copies”.

Example 2: a repeated letter in the answer

Suppose the answer is SPEED, which has two E's, and you guess ERASE:

Both E's are yellow, and so is the S. R and A are gray.

No letter is in the right place, so nothing is green. SPEED has two E's, so both E's in your guess get a yellow. The S is yellow because SPEED contains an S. This tells you the answer has two E's, which is valuable information.

What this means for your strategy

If you see two yellows or greens for the same letter, the answer has that letter at least twice.
If one copy is colored and another is gray, the answer has exactly as many copies as there are colored ones.
Be careful with gray tiles: before you discard a letter, check whether it was gray only because of a repeat.
The on-screen keyboard shows the best color each letter has had, so a key can look green even if one copy of it was gray in a guess.

Tip: when you suspect a repeated letter, guess a word that repeats it. You will learn right away whether you were right.

Example: a green and a gray of the same letter

The situation that confuses people most is seeing a letter you typed twice get two different colors. Imagine the answer is HOUSE and you try SENSE.

The last S and the last E are green. The first S and the E in the second slot turn gray, because HOUSE has only one of each and the greens already used them up.

Those grays do not mean S and E are missing from the word: they mean there are no more copies left. The green always claims the letter first.

Common mistakes

Treating yellow as a mistake. It means the letter exists, just in another slot.
Discarding a gray letter without checking the rest. It may have turned gray because a green already used it.
Forgetting the order of the rule. Green always claims the letter first, and only then come the yellows.
Not looking at the keyboard. It summarizes the best result of each letter and avoids useless repeats.

Practice plan for this week

Play one game only to watch how colors appear on guesses with repeated letters.
Write a test guess with the same letter twice and predict the colors before sending.
Check your prediction and reread the rule if you were wrong.
Repeat three times with different words until reading becomes automatic.

Frequently asked questions about colors

Does yellow mean the letter is wrong?: No. Yellow means the letter exists in the word but in a different position. It is only wrong in that slot.
Can I repeat a gray letter in my next guess?: If a letter turned gray and there is no other colored copy of it, it is not in the word, and repeating it wastes a guess. The exception is when it turned gray because a green had already used it.
How does the keyboard show colors?: Each key shows the best color the letter has ever had. That is why a key can look green even if, in some guess, one copy of it turned gray.
Are repeated letters very common?: More than they seem, especially in long words. In 7-letter words, most answers repeat a letter, so watch for grays next to greens.