A new strategy is taking the X.html” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Wordle community by storm, and players say it makes losing all but impossible. The strategy is to place 25 letters while using only five guesses (presumably, the 21 remaining uses of a guess can be used to test out reasonably spaced new positions and determine which three are redundant): this leaves one letter not used yet, and room for an all-or-nothing last guess. It’s become this week’s buzziest weapon from NYT Games regulars determined to defend long streaks, after a viral post on X spotlighted the strategy.
How the five-word sweep works in today’s Wordle
The sequence in question is CHUNK, FJORD, VIBEX, WALTZ and GYMPS. Combine those five words and you’ve interleaved every letter except Q, which is only doing whatever it pleases these days anyway; by your fifth guess, you have lovingly interrogated the 25-letter alphabet except one, with hints about where guessed letters live that day. Several guesses later and there’s very little noise left for you to focus on other than a simple anagram.
It’s a brute-force interpretation of information theory: maximize coverage first, then figure it out. Wordle’s feedback mechanics incentivize this because every gray eliminates an option and every yellow or green almost drastically confines patterns. If, for example, you ascertain that R, A and E have arrived with positional hints, the reduced grid of remaining candidates within the hot gossip inside NYT’s solutions list (thousands of carefully hand-selected words) tends to implode rapidly.
Why this five-word strategy seems to work so well
Coverage is king. These openers — established by WordleBot and community play like it — SLATE, the hook of CRANE or whatever else are exploring through in the backfield for a high-frequency letter while positioning you within striking distance to solve on the order of 3–4 turns. The sweep in five words inverts that logic, aiming for something close to total clearance of the alphabet. By guess five, the ones you haven’t grayed or positions you haven’t confirmed have by then often steered you to only a few remaining viable answers.
There’s also a probabilistic edge. An attempt to number-crunch the authoritative answer list kept by fans and data scientists suggests that Q is far and away the least likely letter in solutions. Striking 25 letters and also omitting the rarest is a good deal. And since the list limits obscure vocabulary, some pattern-matching from a large set of grays will generally isolate only one sensible word.
Real-world momentum builds, but pushback grows too
The gambit went viral after a strategist on X posted the sequence, with tens of thousands of saves and conversations among solvers comparing their respective results. It’s a streak-saver, fans say, especially under pressure or when running short of time. Critics say it sucks the charm out of a puzzle that, at its best, rewards intuition and smart risk-taking. Indeed, a lot of very good players who understand the principles that back up that logic are happy to keep it in reserve rather than using it as a staple.
It is most convincing on days with thorny letter strings or multiple repeats — situating MYRRH-like answers that throw even tight-lipped guessers off track, for example. On those rounds, aggressive coverage will help you force unusual consonant clusters to the surface or verify that this week’s puzzle rests on a doubled letter.
Main caveats to consider before you try this approach
First, it’s better without Hard Mode enabled. On Hard Mode, players must employ the letters they’ve already turned up in future guesses, which can lock you out of completing a full five-word sweep. Sandrin’s mission at the moment is to get honest people like you and me playing every day without losing too much of their lives to it, so he wants Wordle to be a comfortable place where longtime players won’t have their vocab-y palms slapped with a ruler just because today they ran into the Long Island slang for abs (GYMPS) and got fired.
Third, repeats still demand attention. The game will report to you that a letter is in play, not how many times it appears, so you’ll have to be on the lookout for double L or double E. And note that the approach will eat up five of your six guesses! If you don’t pivot while the evidence is good — say, at three greens and guess three has already made a wrong turn — then failure to pivot risks wasting information that had been there for the taking.
A smarter way to blend this strategy into your play
Another way to consider the five-word sweep as a tool that can enhance solving rather than a rule is not in an overall characterization of one category as account and another account by what it gets wrong. Try it, and unless you hit that etheric dead end of all 3s suddenly turning to 1s before your eyes (which does happen), I expect you’ll find everything breaking in ways you need them to. “Say,” you may shout or think with glee, “this is like swallowing a potato galvanized in acid! My password ‘philologist69’ for sure!” A lot depends on the rule or ruleset under which words can be entered — always worth experimenting. Experienced players often use a hybrid strategy — two or three guesses broad; then hit targeted solving mode. For instance, starting with SLATE then ROUND then CHIRP gives 15 different high-value letters in only three plays. Then you’ll tend to have enough left in the tank by which to finish (not quite burning all six tries if that shows multiple yellows or a green backbone).
The advice here from WordleBot reinforces the same approach: maximize information early on, and then make bold pattern-driven guesses. Whether you do that in one high-entropy opener versus multiple coverage words is a style decision. The five-word sequence is just one example of how the series carries an idea to its furthest extreme.
Bottom line: what this five-word strategy offers
“From a priority perspective, if your No. 1 goal is to protect your streak, this five-word technique can serve as an invaluable safety net.” By trying only 25 letters, it mercilessly collapses the search space and reduces most finales to a single, clean swipe. Purists may long for the elegance of solutions that take the fewest number of moves to achieve, but for millions who use Wordle as a daily ritual, this is about as close as we’ve seen in years to a guaranteed lifeline in the game.
