Repeated letters and gray tiles

Answers can repeat a letter, as in APPLE, LEVEL or EERIE. Quordle colors each copy of a letter separately, which is why a guess can show the same letter in two different colors.

How the game colors repeated letters

For each board the game first marks every letter that is in exactly the right spot green. It then goes left to right through the rest of your guess and marks a letter yellow only if the answer still has an unused copy of it. Any copy left over is gray.

So gray does not always mean "this letter is not in the word". When the same letter is also green or yellow in that guess, gray means "the answer has no more copies than that".

Worked example: APPLE and ALLEY

Suppose one board's answer is APPLE and you guess ALLEY.

• A is green: APPLE starts with A.
• The first L is yellow: APPLE has an L, just not in the second spot.
• The second L is gray: APPLE has only one L, and it was already counted by the yellow tile.
• E is yellow: APPLE has an E, but at the end, not fourth.
• Y is gray: there is no Y.

The lesson from this row: the answer contains exactly one L, not in positions 2 or 3. If both Ls had been yellow, you would know there are at least two.

A second example: EERIE against LEVEL

Repeated letters in your guess can be useful too. Guess EERIE on a board whose answer is LEVEL:

The second E is green and the first is yellow, so LEVEL has at least two Es. The final E is gray, which tells you there are no more than two. One guess has pinned the count of E exactly.

Practical tips

• Read each board on its own. One board may confirm a double letter while another shows none.
• When a board has very few unknown letters left and nothing fits, consider a repeated letter. Words like SKILL, ABBEY or GEESE are easy to overlook.
• In the solver, copy the colors exactly as the game shows them, including the gray copy of a repeated letter. The solver applies the same counting rule.