Hidden word · 5 letters

Attempts:

tap to cross out ✕, again to keep ✓

How to play Commonly

Commonly is a free daily word puzzle. Everyone hunts the same hidden 5-letter word each day, and you have six guesses to find it. It's a calm bit of letter detective work: no clock, just logic and a good vocabulary.

How the puzzle works

The hidden word's first letter is given, and all five of its letters are different. Type a word on the keyboard and press Guess. Commonly then gives you two numbers: how many letters your guess shares with the hidden word, and how many of those are in exactly the right spot (the given first letter counts as one). It never says which letters, so that's for you to work out. Use Mark letters to cross off letters you've ruled out and tick the ones you know are in. Only real words are accepted, and a word that isn't in the list never costs a guess. Every answer is a common word spelled the same in British and American English.

Scoring and the helper

You have six guesses. Finding the word on your first guess earns 12 points, then 10, 8, 6, 4 and 2 for guesses two to six. Stuck early on? The helper reveals one more letter in its right spot, but it halves the day's score and is only available during your first three guesses.

Streaks and badges

Your play streak counts the days in a row you've played, and your solved streak counts the days in a row you've solved the puzzle. Play seven days running and you earn a 7-point bonus, or 14 points if you solved all seven. Miss a day and the streaks start again. A new puzzle arrives every day at midnight UTC.

Tips

Start with a word full of common letters, such as e, a, r, t, s and n, to learn the most from your first guess.

If a guess shares only 1 letter, the given first letter is the only match, so every other letter in that guess is out. Commonly crosses them off for you.

Change one or two letters between guesses: if the count goes up or down, you've learned exactly which letter mattered.

What Commonly trains

Deduction. Each count of shared letters narrows down which letters are in the word.

Vocabulary. Picking smart test words means thinking of many five-letter words.

Working memory. Holding several clues in mind at once is the heart of the puzzle.

Did you know?

Word-guessing games based on shared letters go back to Jotto, a pencil-and-paper game from 1955.

The same idea powers the board game Mastermind, invented in 1970: every answer narrows the possibilities.

Your guesses