Welcome to The Word Finder’s Lingle game! For all the Wordle (or Jottle or Lingo) fanatics looking for more linguistic fun, this is the game for you. In addition to 5-letter Lingles, we have 4- and 6-letter Lingles, meaning you have endless opportunities for fun.

How to Play Our 5-Letter Lingle

1. Guess an initial word. This can be any 5-letter word.
2. If a letter has been placed correctly in the word, it will turn green. You will then know to include that letter in the same spot of the word for all future guesses.
3. If a letter is in the word, but is in the wrong place, it’ll turn yellow. On future guesses, make sure to include the letter in the word, but in a different spot.
4. If a letter is not in a word at all, it will turn grey. You shouldn’t include these letters in future guesses.
5. Keep guessing words until you get the correct answer. Keep in mind that, in our 5-letter Lingle, you only have six guesses to get the word. So make sure to be strategic!
6. If you don’t get the word correct – or even if you do! – you can try again tomorrow. Our Lingle board refreshes with new words every day.

History of Lingo, Jotto, and Wordle

You’ve probably guessed that this game is partially inspired by Wordle, but Wordle is far from the only game of its type. In fact, Wordle itself is very similar to predecessors Lingo and Jotto, two similarly-designed word games that were once big themselves (though perhaps not as big as Wordle.)

Lingo is based on an American game show of the same name. In Lingo, a five-letter word is randomly suggested by a computer, and contestants are given the first letter of the word. Players had five seconds to make a valid guess for the word. If they don’t guess the correct word, the computer will tell them which letters have been correctly placed. It will also tell them which letters are in the word but in the wrong place. Players have five chances to guess the correct word. Though originally only a game show, the game has since been translated to the digital environment so anyone can play. As you can see, this game is very similar to Wordle. The major differences are that players are given the first letter of the word before their first guess; and that players are under a time crunch. 

Likewise, Jotto has a lot in common with both Wordle and Lingle. In Jotto, two players each choose their own secret five-letter words. Then they take turns guessing each other's words. For instance, if one person’s secret word was ‘THOSE,’ an opponent might guess ‘SHARK.’ However, the trick is, instead of being told which letters are correct, they are only told how many are correct. For instance, in the above situation, a player would only be told they had guessed two letters correctly (the H and the S) but not which ones. Unlike Wordle or Lingo, there are no time limits or limits on the number of guesses a player can make. All that’s important is that you guess your opponent’s word before they guess yours.

Finally, perhaps the most famous (recently) guess word game of this type is Wordle. The game, originally launched to the public in late 2021, skyrocketed to fame after catching popularity online. The game’s creator, Josh Wardle, first came up with the game during quarantine in 2020. In the game, players have six guesses to get a five-letter word. Players aren’t given any sort of hints about what the words might be, leaving some people to develop a specific strategy of what words they use for their first few guesses. As in Lingo, players are told which letters in their guesses are in the right spot, are in the word but in the wrong spot, and aren’t in the world at all. However, players have as much time as they’d like between guesses, allowing more amateur players to succeed at the game alongside wordplay aficionados. 

How Many Possible Lingles Are There?

If you’re a major fan of word-guessing games like Lingle, you might find yourself wondering how many possible Lingles there are. After all, there are only a finite number of words in the English language, meaning there are only a finite number of games. The answer to exactly how many Lingles there can be depends on how much each game’s creators have tried to trim down the list of possible words.

According to the Free Dictionary, there are over 150,000 words in the English language. However, many of those words are obscure or archaic, and even those that are still in use may not be familiar to the average person. As a result, when creating Wordle, creator Josh Wardle sorted through the list of five-letter words to find around 2500 words that he thought the average person would recognize. This list now forms the pool of Wordle words. Different 5-letter guessing games might have slightly different options, but on average, you can assume most 5-letter guessing games have around 2500 options.

However, the number of possibilities increases when creators include 4-letter and 6-letter words. There are almost 150,000 4-letter words in English, and over 20,000 6-letter words. Even when those lists are trimmed down, that’s thousands of more Lingle games for you to play. So don’t worry: the games aren’t running out any time soon!

Feedback

How do you like our Lingle games? Was this game fun, or are there things you’d like to see change? Let us know using the feedback button below! Or check out some of our other fun games, including all the games in our Activity Room.