How Many Guesses Do You Get in Lexicon?

If you're new to Lexicon, the rules look familiar at first — guess a five-letter word and get feedback — but the details change the game. Here's exactly how many guesses you get and what the feedback means.

How many guesses do you get?

You get eight guesses to find the hidden five-letter word — two more than Wordle's six. That's not generosity; it's a correction. Lexicon's feedback tells you less per guess than Wordle's colored tiles do, so six guesses would make a well-reasoned board unfairly hard. Eight is the number that keeps the puzzle solvable while still punishing guesses that repeat letters you've already tested.

What the feedback numbers mean

After each guess you see three numbers:

• Correct — letters that are in the word and in the right position
• Present — letters that are in the word but in the wrong position
• Absent — letters that are not in the word at all

The key difference from Wordle: Lexicon does not tell you which letters those numbers refer to, or which position they're talking about. You have to work that out yourself from the overlap between guesses.

Example turn

Say the hidden word is CRANE and you guess TRAIN. Comparing letter by letter:

• Position 1: T vs C — T isn't in CRANE at all.
• Position 2: R vs R — a match.
• Position 3: A vs A — also a match.
• Position 4: I vs N — I isn't in CRANE at all.
• Position 5: N vs E — not a match at this position, but N is in CRANE (at position 4), just not here.

So the feedback reads: Correct: 2 (R and A both landed on their real positions), Present: 1 (N is in the word but you guessed it in the wrong spot), Absent: 2 (T and I aren't in CRANE at all). Notice what you don't get told: which two letters were correct, or where the present letter actually belongs. You know two of your five letters are exactly right and one more is in the word somewhere else — figuring out which ones is the entire game.

Does every puzzle have a solution?

Yes. Every Lexicon board is checked to make sure the target word can be found within the eight guesses with reasonable, non-lucky play. You won't hit a word that requires a blind stab to finish.

Where to practice

Play today's Lexicon daily puzzle or browse the archive if you're a Pro member.