If you know the rules of English Wordle, you are about ninety percent of the way to mastering German Wordle. The concept is identical: guess a hidden five-letter word in six tries, with colored tiles telling you which letters are right. But the German version has its own personality — umlauts, the sharp ß, and a word pool shaped by one of the most compounding-happy languages on earth. This guide walks you through everything: what German Wordle is, where to play it, how the rules differ from the English original, and how the daily puzzle keeps millions of German-speaking players coming back every morning.
It also doubles as a primer for German learners: every round is a small vocabulary lesson disguised as a game, and the words you meet — REGEN, HEUTE, STEIN — are exactly the high-frequency vocabulary that shows up in everyday conversation and beginner textbooks.
What Is German Wordle?
German Wordle is a German-language adaptation of the original Wordle, the once-a-day word puzzle created by Josh Wardle that became a global phenomenon in early 2022 (and was later bought by the New York Times). There is no official German edition from the original creator. Instead, several independent websites rebuilt the game around a German word list, and German-speaking players adopted them enthusiastically.
The most popular of these is 6mal5 (pronounced “sechs mal fünf” — literally “6 times 5”), a German Wordle at 6mal5.com that calls itself the most-played German word game online. Others include wordle.at, wortle.dev, and a handful of smaller clones. All of them work the same way: one new five-letter German word every day, six attempts to find it, and the familiar green-yellow-gray feedback after every guess. Nothing to download, nothing to pay — just a daily puzzle in your browser.
Because there is no single official version, your experience can differ slightly from site to site — most notably in how umlauts and the ß are handled. We will cover those differences in detail below.
Where to Play German Wordle Online
6mal5.com — the most popular choice
6mal5 is the big name in German Wordle. It is free, requires no account, and runs in any browser on a phone or computer. The game gives you six attempts to find a five-letter German word. The site’s own FAQ explains the color logic, reminds you that only one puzzle appears per day, and notes that the game is played mainly in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. One practical detail worth knowing: on 6mal5, the umlauts Ä, Ö, and Ü are not typed as themselves — you enter them as AE, OE, and UE.
wordle.at
Wordle.at is another well-known German-language Wordle. It follows the same daily-puzzle formula and was one of the first German clones players shared on social media back when the Wordle craze started. If you want a second daily puzzle to solve alongside your main game, wordle.at is a natural pick.
wortle.dev
Wortle (at wortle.dev) is a clean German Wordle variant that unlocks a new word at midnight local time each day. It keeps the classic structure: guess the word in six tries, each guess must be a valid five-letter German word, and tile colors reveal how close you are. It is a good option if you prefer a minimal, fast-loading page.
Other German Wordle sites
Beyond the big names, you will find German Wordle versions at addresses like wordle.morss.me and de.wordle.fun. The quality varies: some have generous word lists, some are rougher around the edges. The daily games above are the ones most German players actually use, so start there and only branch out if you want extra practice rounds.
A note on unlimited practice versions
The daily games give you exactly one puzzle per day — that is part of the charm, and it is what lets you compare results with friends. If you want to practice more than once a day, look for a clone with an “unlimited” or “practice” mode. Solving two or three extra puzzles a week is one of the fastest ways to get comfortable with German Wordle strategy before your daily streak is on the line.
Playing on your phone
Most German Wordle sites are mobile-friendly web pages rather than apps, which is actually good news: there is nothing to install, and your stats live in the browser. One practical tip — umlauts are much easier to type on a German keyboard layout, so switch your phone’s keyboard to German (QWERTZ) before you play. The Ä, Ö, Ü, and ß keys appear as dedicated keys instead of long-press options, which makes guessing noticeably faster and avoids the classic mistake of submitting AE when you meant Ä.
How the Rules Work: A Step-by-Step Guide
The basic loop of German Wordle is simple enough to explain in a minute, but it is worth walking through carefully if this is your first word-guessing game.
- Open the game. Visit one of the sites above. You will see a grid of empty tiles — typically six rows of five.
- Type a five-letter German word. It does not have to be the answer; it can be any valid German word. This is your opening guess.
- Press Enter. The game checks your word against its dictionary. If it is not a recognized word, you get an error message and can try another.
- Read the colors. After each valid guess, the tiles change color:
- Green means the letter is in the answer and in the correct position.
- Yellow means the letter is in the answer but in a different position.
- Gray means the letter is not in the answer at all.
- Use the clues to refine your next guess. If R turns green in the first position, the answer starts with R. If E turns yellow, the answer contains E somewhere else. If S turns gray, cross it off entirely.
- Repeat until you solve it — or run out of tries. You get six guesses total. Find the word within six attempts and you win; miss, and the game reveals the answer.
That is the whole game. The strategy lives in which words you guess first, which is covered in our guide to the best German Wordle starting words.
How German Wordle Differs from English Wordle
The English and German versions share a skeleton, but the German language forces several interesting differences.
The word pool is trickier
English Wordle answers are everyday five-letter words — HEART, PLANT, WATER. German also has plenty of common five-letter words (REGEN for rain, HEUTE for today, STEIN for stone), but the language loves long compound words, so five-letter German nouns are a narrower slice of the vocabulary than in English. Answer lists lean toward basic vocabulary: common nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
Grammar makes answers sneakier
German nouns are capitalized, and the game usually accepts capitalized input but displays everything in uppercase — so case is not an issue. What is an issue is German grammar: inflected forms can appear in some word lists. A word like EBENE (plain/level — the word 6mal5 itself uses in its FAQ as an example guess) shows that abstract nouns are fair game. Adjectives appear in their base forms, and verbs in the infinitive (LESEN, RATEN). Keep all word classes in mind, not just nouns.
Letter frequency is different
The most common letters in German are E, N, I, S, R, T, A, and H. Compare that with English, where the top letters are E, A, R, I, O, and T. This matters for your strategy: an opener like AUDIO works in English because of O and U, but in German, N and S carry more weight. German starting word lists are built around E, N, S, R, and T instead.
Umlauts: Ä, Ö, Ü
This is the biggest structural difference. English Wordle has 26 letters and no diacritics. German has four extra characters that matter: Ä, Ö, Ü, and ß. Every German Wordle clone has to decide what to do with them, and the decisions are not uniform:
- Some games include umlauts as separate tiles. The keyboard shows Ä, Ö, and Ü, and answers can contain them (words like ÄPFEL — apples — are theoretically possible, though plurals are usually excluded).
- Some games transliterate. 6mal5, for example, replaces Ä with AE, Ö with OE, and Ü with UE, so you type the two-letter combinations instead. This keeps everything within the standard 26-letter grid.
- A few games exclude umlaut words entirely from the answer list to keep things simple, while still accepting umlaut guesses.
Before you play seriously on a new site, check how it handles umlauts — the game’s help or FAQ page will say. It only takes one lost streak on a word containing an Ö to make you wish you had checked.
The ß (Eszett)
The sharp S — ß — almost never appears in German Wordle, and for good reason: it only occurs in lowercase and never at the start of a word, and in five-letter words it is extremely rare (STRASSE is seven letters; GRUSS is spelled with SS in Switzerland and in modern standard German after short vowels). Most German Wordle clones simply treat ß as SS or exclude it. Do not waste guesses on ß; focus on the standard alphabet plus umlauts as the site dictates.
How the Daily Puzzle Works
Every German Wordle clone runs on the same daily rhythm as the original:
- One word per day. A new puzzle unlocks at midnight (local time on most sites). Everyone playing that site gets the same word, which is why sharing results is fun.
- Your streak is tracked. Win, and your streak counter goes up. Lose, and it resets. Statistics usually include games played, win percentage, current streak, and best streak.
- The answer list is curated. Sites maintain two lists: a smaller list of possible answers (common, fair words) and a larger list of allowed guesses (rarer words the game will accept but never choose as the answer). This is why you can guess an obscure word but will rarely see one as the solution.
- Sharing is built in. After finishing, you can copy an emoji grid of your colored tiles and paste it into a chat or onto social media — no letters revealed, so no spoilers.
If you miss a day, that puzzle is gone; there is no archive in most versions. Some players treat this as motivation to keep the streak alive.
One more thing worth knowing: because everyone on a given site gets the same word, the German Wordle community has its own little rituals. Players post their emoji grids in group chats and on social media, comparing how many tries it took — “Heute in 3!” (today in three) is the standard boast. Spoiler etiquette matters: never post the actual word, only the colored squares. If you play with friends, agree on which site you all use, since each site has its own daily word.
A Walkthrough: Your First Game
Let us play a pretend round on a German Wordle site to see how the clues build up. Suppose the hidden answer is REGEN (rain).
Guess 1: RATEN (to guess — fittingly). Say the tiles come back: R is green, A is gray, T is gray, E is yellow, N is gray. You now know the answer starts with R and contains an E somewhere that is not in the fourth position.
Guess 2: REISE (journey). R is green again, E is green this time (correct position!), I is gray, S is gray, E in position five is yellow? No wait — there is only one E in REGEN, at position 2, and it is already green. A second E would show gray. Let us say the tiles confirm: RE at the start is locked in, I and S are out.
Guess 3: REGEN. With R and E fixed at the start, common letters to fill positions 3–5, and G, E, N as strong candidates, REGEN is a natural try. All green — you win in three.
Real games are messier, of course. But this shows the core skill: every guess is an experiment that must both test new letters and respect confirmed clues. Our German Wordle tips go deeper on that balance.
A useful habit from experienced players: before pressing Enter on any guess, pause and re-read your confirmed clues. Ask yourself three questions. Do all green letters stay in place? Does every yellow letter appear somewhere new? Are there any gray letters I am accidentally reusing? This five-second check catches most careless errors — including the classic blunder of guessing a word that ignores a yellow clue you already found. In a game where you only get six tries, one wasted guess on guess three can be the difference between a win and a broken streak.
Umlauts in Practice: What to Do When You Suspect One
Say you have R_E_N with one letter missing and you are considering GRÜN (green) versus GREIN (not a word) versus… Actually GRÜN is a real word — der Grüne? No: “grün” (green) is an adjective, G-R-Ü-N, five letters counting Ü as one. On a site that supports umlaut tiles, GRÜN is a valid guess. On 6mal5’s transliteration system, you would type GRUEN.
The practical advice: learn your site’s convention before you need it. If the on-screen keyboard has Ä/Ö/Ü keys, umlaut answers are possible — keep words like HÄUSER (houses) in the back of your mind. If the keyboard only shows the standard alphabet, the game has likely transliterated or excluded umlauts, and you can ignore them.
Also remember: umlaut words are a small minority of answers. Do not open with one. Save umlaut guesses for when your clues point that way — for instance, when you have confirmed most letters but no standard word fits.
Common Beginner Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)
Guessing English words. It sounds obvious, but English Wordle players switching to the German version sometimes type CRANE or ADIEU out of habit. Most German clones reject non-German words, which costs you nothing but time — except on sites that count invalid guesses, so break the habit early.
Ignoring the site’s umlaut convention. We have said it three times because it costs streaks: if your site transliterates Ä as AE, a guess containing a real umlaut tile may be rejected or behave unexpectedly. Read the FAQ once and you are set forever.
Reusing gray letters. It is surprisingly easy to guess REISE right after REGEN was ruled out for the S. Gray means gone — write eliminated letters down, or use the keyboard coloring the game provides, and check each new guess against it.
Forgetting word classes. English Wordle answers are often nouns, so English players default to nouns. German answers can be verbs (LESEN), adjectives (GRÜN), adverbs (HEUTE), or pronouns (MEINE). If your noun-only guesses keep failing, switch word classes.
Solving too fast. Because you only get one puzzle a day, there is no reason to rush. Walk away for ten minutes if you are stuck on guess four. Fresh eyes solve word puzzles remarkably well — and a broken streak cannot be unbroken.
Key Takeaways
- German Wordle is a fan-made German adaptation of the original Wordle — there is no official German edition, but sites like 6mal5.com, wordle.at, and wortle.dev are well established.
- The rules are the same as English Wordle: six tries to find a five-letter word, with green/yellow/gray tile feedback after each guess.
- The biggest differences are linguistic: German letter frequency (E, N, S, R, T on top), and the handling of umlauts (Ä, Ö, Ü) and ß, which varies by site.
- On 6mal5, umlauts are typed as AE, OE, and UE. Other sites may show umlaut keys or exclude them — check the site’s FAQ before playing seriously.
- One new puzzle unlocks daily at midnight local time; streaks, statistics, and shareable emoji grids work the same as in the original game.
- Start with a strong opening word and play the clue-elimination game patiently — the strategy guide at /german-wordle-tips/ covers the rest.
FAQ
Is there an official German Wordle?
No. The original Wordle was created by Josh Wardle and acquired by the New York Times; no official German edition exists. German players use independent adaptations such as 6mal5, wordle.at, and wortle.dev.
Where can I play Wordle in German?
The most popular option is 6mal5.com, which describes itself as the most-played German word game online. Other established choices are wordle.at and wortle.dev. All are free and run in a browser with no account required.
How do umlauts work in German Wordle?
It depends on the site. 6mal5 replaces Ä, Ö, and Ü with the two-letter combinations AE, OE, and UE. Other versions show dedicated umlaut keys on the keyboard or exclude umlaut words from answers. Check the game’s help page to see which convention it uses.
Does German Wordle use the letter ß?
Effectively no. The ß is extremely rare in five-letter words and never appears at the start of a word. Most German Wordle clones treat it as SS or leave it out of the word lists entirely.
Is German Wordle harder than English Wordle?
It can feel that way at first, mainly because of umlaut uncertainty and different letter frequencies. But the core logic is identical, and once you adjust your starting words to German letter patterns, the difficulty evens out.
Can I play more than one German Wordle per day?
Each site offers one puzzle per day, but nothing stops you from playing on multiple sites. 6mal5, wordle.at, and wortle.dev each have their own daily word, so you can solve three puzzles every morning if you like. Practice versions with unlimited rounds exist on some clone sites too.