Phrazle: frequently asked questions

Phrazle is a free word puzzle in which you guess a hidden English phrase, such as an idiom or a saying, in six tries. It runs in any browser on phones, tablets and computers. After each guess, colored tiles show which letters are in the right spot, which belong elsewhere in the same word, which belong in another word and which are not in the phrase.

Type a guess for the whole phrase on the on-screen keyboard or on your own keyboard. Spaces and fixed tiles such as apostrophes are skipped automatically. Press Enter when every tile is filled, read the colors, and use them for your next guess. You win when every tile turns green. The How to Play page explains every rule with examples.

No. Each word of your guess must be a real English word of the right length, but the words do not have to make sense together. Guessing useful letters is often smarter than guessing a phrase you think is right.

The guess is not counted. The game names the words it does not know and lets you change them, so you never lose a try because of a typo.

Each copy of a letter in your guess gets a color only if the phrase still has an unmatched copy of it. Greens are marked first, then gold inside each word, then purple from left to right across the phrase. If you type three O's and the phrase has only one, at most one of your O's is colored and the others are gray.

Two. A new Daily puzzle starts at midnight and another at noon, in your local time. You can also play as many extra puzzles as you like in Unlimited and in the categories.

Your Daily streak grows by one for every day in a row on which you win at least one of the two Daily puzzles. If a day passes without a Daily win, the streak starts again from zero, but your longest streak stays in your statistics. In Unlimited and in each category the streak counts wins in a row instead, and a loss, or abandoning a game you have started, resets it.

Unlimited gives you a new random phrase whenever you finish one, with no daily limit. The ten categories work the same way, but every phrase comes from one theme, such as animals, food or sports. Neither mode repeats the last 50 phrases you played in it, and neither gives away today's or yesterday's Daily answers.

Yes. The archive lists every past Daily puzzle, so you can play the ones you missed, or finish one you started, at any time. Archive games do not change your Daily statistics or your streak. Open the archive.

Press Share in the result window. On a phone you can send it to any app; on a computer it is copied so you can paste it. The text shows the puzzle and your score, a line with the number of hints if you used any, and one row of colored squares per guess, with no letters, so it never spoils the puzzle. It ends with a link: to the Daily page, to that archive puzzle, or to the exact Unlimited or category phrase.

No. The Hint button under the board opens the hints: show the meaning once, or reveal up to two letters by tapping tiles of your current row. Each hint opens after a short ad. Every word keeps at least one letter that is not revealed. Hints do not use up any of your six guesses; the number you used is shown in your result, your statistics and the text you share.

Yes. Your current games, your statistics and your settings are saved in your browser as you play, so a reload continues where you were. They stay on the device where you play, so they do not move to another phone or computer. A private window starts fresh, and clearing your browser's data for this site deletes them.

If you play in the same browser as before, the new game finds your old statistics the first time you open it and adds them to your English Daily statistics: games played, wins and guess distribution, and the longer of your two best streaks. Your current streak is kept if your last old Daily game was won today or yesterday. Games from the old practice mode go to your English Unlimited statistics.

You can choose a light, dark or automatic theme, switch to high-contrast colors (orange for the right spot, blue for the same word, purple for another word), turn sound and vibration on or off, reduce animations, change the language and replay the three-step tutorial. Vibration is offered only on phones and tablets that support it.

Yes. Phrazle is available in 16 languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Russian, Turkish, Polish, Dutch, Indonesian, Swedish, Czech, Romanian, Hungarian and Ukrainian. Each language has its own native sayings and its own keyboard, so the puzzles are not translations of the English ones. Use the language menu on the page or the language option in Settings.

Yes. Every mode is free, with no account and nothing to download or buy. The site is paid for by the ads shown around the game, never on the board or the keyboard, and by a short ad before each hint you ask for.

The phrase list was put together from well-known English idioms, sayings and everyday expressions, and every phrase comes with a short explanation of its meaning. The Daily puzzles use the better-known phrases; Unlimited and the categories also include some rarer ones. If you think a phrase or its meaning is wrong, please tell us.

Send us a message through the contact form. If something went wrong in a puzzle, the puzzle number and the device you used help us find the problem quickly.