About Countrydle
Countrydle is a Wordle-style puzzle where every answer is a five-letter country. You get six guesses, and coloured tiles tell you which letters are right. Unlike the original Wordle, there is no daily puzzle: you can play one country after another and build a winning streak.
How to play
- The answer is one of the 25 countries whose name is exactly five letters: Benin, Chile, China, Congo, Egypt, Gabon, Ghana, Haiti, India, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Libya, Malta, Nauru, Nepal, Niger, Palau, Qatar, Samoa, Spain, Sudan, Syria, Tonga or Yemen.
- Each guess must also be one of those 25 countries. Other words are rejected with a message and do not use up a try.
- After a guess, a green tile means the right letter in the right spot, yellow means the letter is in the name but elsewhere, and grey means it is not in the name (or not again).
- Repeated letters are scored like Wordle: a letter is only marked yellow as many times as it appears in the answer.
- Solve within six guesses to add one to your streak. Failing six times reveals the answer and resets the streak to zero.
- Your score is your current streak, and the best streak is what gets saved.
Controls
- Type letters on a keyboard, press Enter to submit and Backspace to delete.
- Or tap the on-screen keyboard, including its ENTER and back keys.
- The on-screen keys change colour to show what you know about each letter so far.
Tips and strategy
- With only 25 possible answers, you can learn the list. Knowing all of them turns each game into a logic puzzle rather than a guess.
- A good opening guess covers common letters in common positions. Ghana, India or Kenya each test several letters that appear across the list.
- Use position, not just presence: many answers end in A (Ghana, India, Kenya, Libya, Malta, Samoa, Syria, Tonga, China), so a green A in the last spot narrows things far less than a green first letter.
- Do not reuse grey letters. Every guess must be a real country, so pick the remaining candidate that rules out the most others.
- If two or three options are left, choose a guess that splits them, even if it cannot be the answer itself.
Background
Wordle was created by software engineer Josh Wardle and released to the public in October 2021. It became a worldwide hit within months and was bought by The New York Times in early 2022. Its simple feedback rules have since been applied to many themed word lists. Countrydle's list is much smaller than an English dictionary, which changes the strategy: with 25 answers, a well-chosen first guess usually leaves only a handful of possibilities.
Questions
- Is there one puzzle per day?
- No. A new random country is chosen every time, and you can play as many as you like.
- Can I guess any five-letter word?
- No. Guesses must be one of the 25 five-letter country names; anything else shows a 'not a 5-letter country' message and does not count as a try.
- Where is my best streak saved?
- In your browser's local storage on this device.