Phrase Guess Tips: How to Read the Word Gaps and Win in Six Tries (2026)
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?code=GOODMORNING phrase; two clean loads dealing the same daily phrase; one touch tap typing exactly one letter; a short row rejected without spending a row; the duplicate rule (a green plus a gray proves the phrase holds exactly one copy of that letter); a solved row turning fully green with the board freezing; six wrong rows ending the round and naming the phrase; and both production stages (348x261 and 894x670) passing the three layout assertions — scrollHeight <= clientHeight, every row and key inside the stage, every key answering to elementFromPoint at its own centre — plus a real typed row scoring on each. The shipped answer pool was scanned as well: 441 phrases, 379 two-word and 62 three-word, split 7 letters (64) / 8 (113) / 9 (106) / 10 (85) / 11 (45) / 12 (20) / 13 (8); the most common letters are E, O, A, T and R, and the rarest are J, X, Q and Z.1. The word gaps are a free hint - use them before you type
Most word games hide everything. This one hands you the shape of the answer on the first load: because the phrase is 2 or 3 words and the gaps are drawn from the start, you can see at a glance that today's phrase is, say, 4 letters then 7, or 3 + 3 + 4. That is real information, and it changes the opening.
Read the shape before you touch the keyboard. A two-word 4+7 board rules out every one-word answer and every long compound; a 3+5 board points at the everyday two-word expressions that fill English. Buyers of this game rarely notice they are already being told the word count.
2. Your first guess should probe the alphabet, not guess the phrase
A phrase of 11 letters drawn from common English is not a 11-letter word - it is two or three ordinary words, which means the letter mix is friendly. The five most common letters in the shipped pool are E, O, A, T and R; J, X, Q and Z are rare enough to be near-free eliminations. So an opening that spends its slots on vowels and the workhorse consonants tells you more than an opening that tries to be right.
Because you already know the split, you can also probe word by word: guess the most likely short word for the first gap and the most likely opener for the second. A guess does not have to be a real phrase - the row is scored letter by letter, exactly like the base game - so use that freedom to cover letters rather than to be clever.
3. Green, yellow and gray - and why gray is the strongest
Scoring is the standard two-pass rule. Green means the right letter in the right slot. Yellow means the letter is in the phrase but this is the wrong slot. Gray means every copy of that letter in the phrase is already accounted for.
New players read gray as a wasted tile. It is the opposite: gray is the only result that removes a letter for good, and with 26 letters to choose from, a gray in the first row is worth more than a yellow in the fourth. Two spelling traps are worth knowing. First, a green does not prove the letter appears once - a green plus a gray on the same letter does prove exactly one copy. Second, when the phrase repeats a letter, yellow is spent one copy at a time: put the same letter in two slots and the result tells you the count, not just the presence.
4. Turn the split into a plan
Once the greens and yellows start landing, fill the words in the order the gaps force on you rather than left to right. A 3+3+4 phrase is three small problems, and a short word is usually decided by two or three letters - the article or preposition shapes that tiny words can be are few. When one word is solved, its letters stop being unknowns and start constraining the others, so solving the smallest word first is usually the fastest route.
Keep a mental list of the letters you have eliminated. A gray is permanent evidence: do not spend a slot re-testing a letter you already ruled out, and do not assume a green letter is retired - it can still appear again in the other word.
5. The endgame: count the candidates instead of guessing
With one or two rows left, stop exploring. Write down every phrase that still fits all the feedback you have - the shown word lengths, the pinned letters, the eliminated ones. On a well-probed board that list is usually short. If one phrase survives, play it. If several do, play the guess that separates them: the one whose letters differ most from the survivors, so its greens and grays split the field.
The most common endgame mistake is a guess that is consistent with the board but does not distinguish between the two or three phrases you are actually choosing from. Those two are different questions, and only the second one wins rows.
6. Six rows, and a phrase pool of 441
The answer comes from a pool of 441 phrases that Playnesta wrote for this page: common greetings, everyday expressions, collocations and a few short proverbs, each 2 or 3 words and 7 to 13 letters long. The pool is filtered twice - once when it is written and once by the engine when the page loads - so a phrase that cannot fit on a phone row can never be dealt. The daily phrase is drawn from that pool with the same calendar seed the station's other daily games use, so it changes at local midnight and is the same for everyone.
Six rows against a 441-phrase pool is generous on purpose: this is a phrase game, not a memory test. If a round goes wrong the phrase is revealed, and the New phrase button deals a random one immediately. A ?code=GOODMORNING link pins a phrase if you want to race a friend on the same board.
FAQ
How do you play Phrase Guess?
Read the word gaps, then type letters into the row with the on-screen keyboard or your own keyboard and press Enter. Each letter is scored green (right letter, right slot), yellow (the letter is in the phrase but in another slot) or gray (every copy of that letter is already accounted for). Solve the phrase within six rows to win.
Do I need to guess a real phrase?
No. Any letters will do and they are scored letter by letter, which is why a probe like a vowel-heavy string is a legitimate opening. The phrase only matters as the answer.
What do the gaps between the words mean?
They are the shape of the answer. The phrase always has 2 or 3 words and the board draws the gaps from the first load, so you know the word count and each word's length before you type. The row wraps at those gaps by itself - there is no space key.
Why is a gray letter better than a yellow one?
Because gray removes a letter from the phrase completely, while yellow only says "somewhere else". With 26 letters in play, a gray early is the cheapest information on the board.
Can the phrase repeat a letter?
Yes, and the two-pass scoring handles it: a repeated letter can come back yellow for one copy and gray for the next once every copy in the phrase has been used up. Guessing the same letter twice in one row is a deliberate way to count copies.
How long is the answer, and how many phrases are there?
Answers are 7 to 13 letters in total, split over 2 or 3 words. The shipped pool holds 441 phrases, split 64 / 113 / 106 / 85 / 45 / 20 / 8 across 7 to 13 letters.
Is everyone playing the same phrase?
Yes - the opening phrase is the daily phrase, derived from the calendar date, so every player gets the same one until local midnight. A ?code=GOODMORNING link pins a specific phrase for practice or sharing, and the New-phrase button deals a random one from the pool.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. The tile size is derived from the answer's shape and from the measured stage height, so a 13-letter three-word answer still fits one line and the whole board plus the keyboard fits the phone stage with no vertical overflow; a tap runs the same code path as a mouse click.
Where can I play it?
Right on this site's phrase-guess page. The engine, the board and the 441-phrase answer pool are Playnesta-original; the base tile styling and the two-pass scoring pattern come from the MIT-licensed wordle-clone by WebDevSimplified and contributors (commit b12c2df). No bitmap, audio or font asset ships with the page and nothing is fetched at runtime.
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