Worldle tips and strategies

Read the shape before you type

The silhouette is your only clue before the first guess, so give it a few seconds. Ask yourself three questions:

• Is it one piece or many? Several separate pieces mean islands. A long chain of them suggests Indonesia, the Philippines or Japan; a few tiny dots spread far apart point to the Pacific, to places such as Kiribati or French Polynesia.
• Are there straight lines? Long, ruler-straight edges are borders drawn on maps. They are common in North Africa and the Middle East (Egypt, Libya, Algeria), and in North America.
• Is it compact, with no bays or offshore islands? A shape with no peninsulas and no small islands around it is often landlocked, like Chad, Hungary or Paraguay. A long, ragged coastline with fjords or many inlets points to places like Norway, Chile or Croatia.

Practicing a single region in Practice is the fastest way to learn these shapes.

Start with a big, central country

If the shape tells you nothing, do not guess a random small country. Start in the middle of a large land mass, for example Chad in Africa, Kazakhstan in Asia, Germany in Europe or Bolivia in South America. Wherever the answer is, the first row then tells you a lot: a high percentage confirms the continent, and the arrow shows which part of it to search.

Avoid an edge of the map as a first guess. A guess like New Zealand or Chile leaves most of the world in the same direction, and the arrow says little.

Turn the percentage into kilometers

The percentage is distance on a scale of 20,000 km. Each point is 200 km, so the answer is at most (100 − percentage) × 200 km away. Learn a few values and you can picture a circle around your guess:

A useful rule: under 80% the answer is more than 4,000 km away, often on another continent; from 95% up it is usually a neighbor or a neighbor's neighbor.

Read the arrow and the percentage together

The arrow alone gives you a direction, and the percentage alone gives you a circle. Together they mark a small area: follow the arrow from your guess for about the distance shown. Two guesses are even better, because their arrows cross near the answer.

In this round Mozambique points east and Mauritius points west, both at about 1,100 to 1,200 km. The only large country between them is Madagascar.

The direction is a compass bearing as you would read it on a normal flat world map, rounded to one of 8 directions. Each covers a wedge of 45°, so treat the arrow as "roughly this way", not as an exact line.

Remember that distances use center points

Distances are measured between the center points of countries, not between their borders. Two neighbors are never 0 km apart: Germany is 607 km from Poland and shows 96%. Very large countries are tricky, because their center can be far from the part you are thinking of. The center of Russia lies in Siberia, so Russia shows 1,635 km and an arrow pointing south when the answer is Mongolia, right on its border. The same goes for Canada, the United States, China, Brazil and Australia.

Above 95%, guess the neighbors

Once a guess reaches 95% or more, stop jumping around. List the neighbors of that guess that lie in the arrow's direction and try the biggest of them first, because a big neighbor gives you another clear arrow.

France points southwest at 94%, so the answer is about 1,000 km away in that direction. Spain is the obvious next step, and its arrow points west at 98%. Only one country lies there.

Do not go back where the arrows rule you out

Every guess should fit all the rows you already have: in the direction of each arrow and within each distance. If France points east, guessing Spain or Portugal wastes a turn, because they lie west of France. Before you press Enter, check your idea against each row, not only the last one.

This also helps with the daily country. A country does not come back within 100 days, so yesterday's answer will not be today's. And after a very small country or territory, under 5,000 km², the next 7 days bring only larger ones.

Tips for the flag and capital rounds

In the flag round the three wrong flags come from neighbors or look similar, so look at the details:

• Ireland and Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) use the same three colors. Ireland has green next to the flagpole, Côte d'Ivoire has orange there.
• The Netherlands and Luxembourg both have red, white and blue stripes; the blue of Luxembourg is much lighter.
• Mali and Senegal share green, yellow and red; only Senegal has a green star in the middle.
• Chad and Romania look almost the same; the blue of Chad is darker.

In the capital round the wrong answers are cities from the same part of the world. Watch out for countries whose capital is not their largest or best-known city: Australia (Canberra, not Sydney), Canada (Ottawa), Turkey (Ankara), Brazil (Brasília), Nigeria (Abuja), Morocco (Rabat) and Vietnam (Hanoi).

The bonus rounds start after the main round, whether you won or lost, so a missed country can still earn you stars. For the rules of both rounds, see How to Play.