What Headle is

Every day you get one puzzle. You have six tries to find a hidden five-letter word, with the familiar green, yellow and gray coloring guiding you. The difference is the opponent sitting across from you. Your opening guess becomes the word the computer has to solve, and its opening guess is the word you are chasing. Two puzzles, one race, six turns each.

That small change alters how the game feels. A safe, information-rich opener helps you and helps your opponent equally. Playing well means balancing what you learn against what you give away, which is a decision ordinary word games never ask you to make.

How it differs from Wordle

Headle borrows the five-letter grid and the color feedback that Wordle made familiar, and departs from it in three ways. There is a live opponent rather than a solo puzzle. Games are rated, so results accumulate into a skill rating rather than vanishing at midnight. And puzzles are generated per player, so your word is yours.

Headle is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Wordle or The New York Times.

Frequently asked questions

Is Headle free?

Yes. The game is free to play, and there is no paid tier.

Do I need an account?

No. You can play without signing in and your progress is kept in your browser for the current day. Signing in with Google adds streak tracking and keeps your rating and history attached to your account rather than a single browser, so you keep them when you switch devices or clear your cookies.

When does the new word appear?

At midnight in your own time zone rather than on a fixed server clock, so the reset happens when your day actually changes.

How is my rating calculated?

Headle uses an Elo rating, the same approach used to rank chess players. You gain rating for wins and lose it for defeats, and the amount depends on how your rating compares to your opponent's. Beating an opponent rated well above you is worth more than beating one below you. Ties leave your rating unchanged.

What is experience?

Experience accumulates every time you finish a game, whether you win or lose. Unlike rating it never goes down, so it reflects how much you have played rather than how well.

How do streaks work?

Streaks are tied to the word you successfully defended. Win or tie and that word carries forward, building a streak when you play on consecutive days. Missing a day resets it. Streaks require an account, since they need somewhere durable to live.

Are guesses checked against a dictionary?

Yes. Guesses must be real five-letter words. Invalid entries are rejected without costing you a turn, so a typo is never punished. Hidden words are drawn from a smaller list of more familiar words, so the answer is always something recognizable even though the accepted guess list is much larger.

Can I play on my phone?

Yes. Headle runs in any modern browser and the layout adapts to phones and tablets. No app install is required.

Contact

Questions, bug reports and suggestions are welcome at hi@headle.app. There is also a chat button on the game page if you would rather write from there.