Short answer first, since it’s the one people actually search for: no, you can’t change the word length in the official Wordle (the New York Times version). It’s fixed at 5 letters, every day, for everyone, with no settings menu that changes it. That’s a deliberate design choice, not a bug or a hidden option you’ve missed.
Want to actually pick 4, 5, 6, or 7 letters yourself?
Try Guess The Word by MaslonLabs →Why Wordle Doesn’t Let You Change the Word Length
Wordle was built around one specific, shared daily puzzle — everyone in the world gets the same 5-letter word on the same day, which is exactly what made it easy to share results and talk about with other people. Letting each player pick their own word length would break that shared-puzzle format entirely, since there’d be no single answer to compare. The New York Times, which owns Wordle, has kept it deliberately simple and unchanged in this respect since acquiring it.
What You Can Actually Change in Wordle
To be fair to the game, there are a few real settings worth knowing about, just not word length:
- Hard Mode — forces you to reuse any correct letters you’ve already found in later guesses.
- Color blind mode — swaps the green/yellow tile colors for a more accessible palette.
- Dark theme — a display preference, not a gameplay change.
None of these touch the 5-letter format itself.
If You Actually Want a Different Word Length
This is the useful part: what a lot of people are actually looking for here is “a game like Wordle, but you can change the number of letters” — the same tile-guessing mechanic, just not locked to 5 letters. That’s a real, common request, and the answer isn’t “wait for Wordle to add it.” It’s to use a different app built around that idea from the start.
Guess The Word: Custom Length by MaslonLabs is built specifically around this — you pick a word length from 4 to 7 letters and a category (Random, Animals, Geography, Food, Sport, or Names) before every round, with green/yellow/gray tiles working the same way you already know from Wordle. Each word length tracks its own separate best streak, so a 4-letter round and a 7-letter round are two different personal records, not one blended average.
It also keeps Wordle’s one-a-day format if that’s what you’re after — there’s a daily Word of the Day, shared by everyone playing in the same language, with one attempt allowed per day, same as the original.
Full breakdown on our Guess The Word app page, or get it directly on Google Play.
Other Ways to Get a Different Word Length
If you specifically want to stay in a browser rather than install an app, a handful of independent web-based Wordle variants let you set a custom word length directly in the page, without an official affiliation to the New York Times. They’re a reasonable option for a one-off browser session, though they won’t give you the daily-streak format or an installed app you can open offline.
Ready to set your own word length?
Get Guess The Word by MaslonLabs →Frequently Asked Questions
Can you change the word length in Wordle?
No. The official New York Times Wordle is fixed at 5 letters for every player, every day, with no setting to change it.
Is there a 4-letter or 6-letter version of Wordle?
Not from the New York Times directly. For a built-in, adjustable word length, Guess The Word by MaslonLabs lets you choose 4, 5, 6, or 7 letters before each round.
Is there a game like Wordle but you can change the number of letters?
Yes — Guess The Word by MaslonLabs is exactly that: the same green/yellow/gray tile mechanic as Wordle, but you set the word length yourself (4 to 7 letters) before every round instead of it being fixed.
Why is Wordle always 5 letters?
It was designed around one shared daily puzzle that every player solves together, which only works if everyone is solving the exact same word — changeable word length would break that shared format.
Does Guess The Word have a daily challenge like Wordle?
Yes — it includes a Word of the Day, the same for every player in a given language, with one attempt allowed per day, on top of the unlimited custom-length rounds.
Is Guess The Word free?
Yes, it’s free to download on Google Play.
The tile-guessing format Wordle popularized is genuinely good — good enough that wanting more control over it, like the word length, is a completely reasonable thing to want. It just has to come from a different app, since Wordle itself was never going to be that app.
