What Are the Odds of Getting Wordle in One?

For a blind first guess against one equally likely answer out of N possibilities, the chance is 1 in N.

That formula is useful, but it is a model, not a measured NYT player statistic. Your starting word, the answer-selection process, and which words are eligible all matter. There is no single percentage that describes every version of Wordle or every player.

A simple numerical example

Suppose a game chooses one answer uniformly from 2,300 words, and your first guess is one of those words. Your chance is 1 ÷ 2,300, or approximately 0.0435%. That is about one win per 2,300 independent attempts on average—not a promise that your 2,300th attempt will succeed.

The number 2,300 is illustrative. It is not a claim about the current NYT answer list. A dictionary of words allowed as guesses is also not necessarily the same size as the list eligible to be answers.

Try different assumptions

Assumes exactly one winning word, equal answer probabilities, and independent days with the same pool size. The actual NYT schedule is edited; this calculator does not predict it.

What if I play for a year?

If the probability of a win on each independent day is p, the chance of at least one win over d days is 1 − (1 − p)^d. We calculate the chance of no wins and subtract it from one. Adding the daily percentages is only an approximation for small probabilities.

Repeatedly using a favorite starting word does not make it “due.” If the game avoids repeated answers or its editor follows other selection rules, the independent-day model no longer describes the schedule exactly.

What changes when a clue is already visible?

A colored starting word provides information before you submit anything. You can remove words with incorrect green positions, missing yellow letters, or wrong letter counts. The relevant set becomes the words still consistent with the clue.

In a hypothetical game with one target left among five equally plausible candidates, choosing randomly would give a 20% chance. But eliminating candidates logically is different from guessing randomly: a player can often identify the intended solution from the evidence.

How this website differs from standard Wordle

Our Wordle In One accepts any dictionary word that matches the entire clue. Once you have found and checked such a word, it counts as solved. You do not face a further lottery between several accepted candidates.

“Solved in one” in your statistics means your first distinct valid submission succeeded. It measures your own results on this website; it is not the percentage of all Wordle players who find the standard NYT answer on their first guess.

Can strategy guarantee a first-guess win?

Without clues, a starting word can gather useful information without being especially likely to be today’s answer. Those are different goals. In a clue-based puzzle, carefully checking all the constraints is the more useful skill. Read our worked example and repeated-letter guide before trying another round.