This is the FAQ for Absurdle.

You may also be interested in this longer essay discussing Absurdle's origins, internals and future.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best possible score in Absurdle?

4 guesses. And yes, this has been obtained by many different people.

6 guesses is good for a casual player, and 5 guesses is extremely good. To find a solution in 4 guesses almost always requires some kind of computer search. 3 guesses is impossible in this game.

For comparison, it's entirely possible to get 2 guesses in Wordle — I've done it — and you can get 1 guess if you are insanely lucky or if you peek into the game's code to find out what today's secret word is — I have done this too.

In hard mode the best possible score is still 4 guesses. In challenge mode, many words can still be forced in 4 guesses, but it's not known if all of them can.

Is it possible for the secret word to have multiple instances of the same letter in it, like "PUPPY"?

Yes. This is true in Wordle as well.

I keep ending up with the same secret word.

This happens when you make similar guesses in each game. Try hitting "random guess" once or twice at the start of each game to stir the pot.

My first guess was "EXITS" (or something like it), and Absurdle responded with one yellow, like 🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜ (or something like it). Shouldn't it have responded with ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜, which reveals less information?

In this specific case, there were 427 possible secret words which gave a 🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜, but only 417 possible secret words which gave a ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜, so Absurdle chose the former. In general, Absurdle always chooses the largest bucket, which is not necessarily the response with the fewest yellows or greens.

If my guess is "APPLE", but the secret word only has one "P" in it, like "CRIMP", what happens?

In this case the response is ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜. Note how there is one yellow, indicating that there is one unknown "P" in the secret word. Wordle behaves the same way.

Is there a way to see the remaining secret words after each guess?

If you're playing on desktop, yes. Open your browser's developer tools (usually F12) and look in the console. I use this information during development and debugging.

Note that this is technically cheating.

I narrowed the secret word to one common word and one obscure word, like "BUDGE" and "PUDGE". How come the answer is always the common word and never the obscure word?

Absurdle uses two word lists: ~2,000 words which can be the secret word, and ~10,000 rather more obscure words which are allowed as guesses but can never be the secret word. "BUDGE" is in the first list, "PUDGE" is in the second.

How were the word lists assembled?

Absurdle's word lists are derived from Wordle's, which were in turn constructed by Josh Wardle and his partner. Putting any particular word in any particular list was a completely subjective judgement call and there was no formal decision-making process.

Can you modify Absurdle to behave a little randomly? Or at least a little less mercilessly?

'Fraid not. Absurdle is intended to always display the most evil possible behaviour. This means it has to be deterministic. This in turn does, admittedly, make it a little predictable.

Can I access my statistics?

Absurdle does not retain statistics.

Will you make Absurdle's code available to the public?

No, I'm keeping this one closed-source.

See my GitHub for examples of code which I do make available to the public, including the source for HATETRIS.

How does challenge mode work?

Check out this guide.