English

Finding a Winning Strategy for Wordle is NP-complete

Computational Complexity 2022-04-11 v1

Abstract

In this paper, we give a formal definition of the popular word-guessing game Wordle. We show that, in general, determining if a given Wordle instance admits a winning strategy is NP-complete. We also show that given a Wordle instance of size NN, a winning strategy that uses gg guesses in the worst case (if any) can be found in time NO(g)N^{O(g)}.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2204.04104,
  title  = {Finding a Winning Strategy for Wordle is NP-complete},
  author = {Will Rosenbaum},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2204.04104},
  year   = {2022}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-24T10:42:32.175Z