How to Play Colordle
Colordle is a daily color-guessing game. Everyone gets the same hidden color each day, and your job is to find its exact name using as few guesses as possible.
The goal
Every day there is one secret color, picked from a list of named colors. Type a color name (like Sage, Burnt Orange or Midnight Blue) or a hex code (like #4682B4) and press Guess. Each guess gets a score that tells you how close you are. You win when you hit the exact color: a score of 100%.
As you type, the box suggests matching names from the active color list, so you don't need to know every name by heart. Exploring the suggestions is part of the fun: there are colors called Elephant in the Room, Freshly Baked and Charismatic.
How the score works
Your score is not based on whether the name "sounds" right. It measures how similar the two colors look to the human eye. Colordle converts both colors into the CIELAB color space and computes their perceptual distance with the CIEDE2000 formula (often written ΔE00). The score is simply:
score = 100 − ΔE00 (never below 0)
So a guess that is visually very close scores in the high 90s, and an opposite color scores near 0. As a rough guide:
| Score | What it means |
|---|---|
| 100% | Exact match. You win. |
| 99–99.9% | Practically identical: most people can't see a difference. |
| 98–99% | Very close: only visible when compared carefully side by side. |
| 90–98% | Noticeably different at a glance, but the same family of color. You're in the right neighborhood. |
| 70–90% | Related, but a clearly different shade, lightness or hue. |
| Below 70% | A different color altogether. Try another region. |
Because the score follows perception rather than names, two colors with completely different names can score 99%, and two "blues" can be far apart. The About page explains the color science in more detail.
Hints
When you get stuck, hints tell you which way to move. Once hints are unlocked, a ? button appears on each guess and shows directions such as:
- Lighter ↑ / Darker ↓: the target is lighter or darker than your guess.
- Redder +a / Greener −a: the target sits further toward red or toward green.
- Yellower +b / Bluer −b: the target sits further toward yellow or toward blue.
Hints are earned, not free: they unlock once you have made at least half as many guesses as the day's average winner. If nobody has solved the day yet, they unlock after 50 guesses.
A new color every day
A new puzzle starts every day at midnight UTC. Each puzzle has a day number, shown in the Day box at the bottom of the screen. You can type an earlier day number and press Load to play any past puzzle, or press the dice button to jump to a random past day. Future days can't be loaded.
Each day's color is the same for every player in the world, so you can compare results with friends.
Color lists
Colordle can use many different color dictionaries, chosen from the list menu. Each list has its own daily color and its own leaderboard. Some favorites:
- Full List: about 30,000 crowd-sourced color names. The daily target is chosen from a hand-picked set of about 4,700 distinctive names, so you won't be asked to find an obscure near-duplicate.
- Basic and HTML / CSS: short lists of standard colors, perfect for a quick game.
- XKCD Survey: the names people actually use, from a large online color-naming survey.
- Historical and cultural lists: Japanese and Chinese traditional colors, Werner's Nomenclature (used by Charles Darwin), Ridgway's bird colors, Le Corbusier's architectural palette, Sanzo Wada's color dictionary, and color names in several languages.
Community stats
Under the guess box you'll see how many people have solved today's color, their average number of tries, and your rank once you win (rank #1 is the first player to solve that day). These numbers are anonymous totals: no account, name or email is needed.
Tools that help
3D Color Explorer
Click the arrow icon next to any guess to teleport into the 3D Explorer, a flyable map of every named color arranged by how it looks. Seeing which named colors sit around your best guess is a great way to find candidates you hadn't thought of.
Color Name Picker
The Color Name Picker lets you upload a photo and click anywhere on it to find the closest named color. Handy for learning names, and for settling arguments about what color something really is.
Strategy tips
- Start broad. Open with very different colors (a red, a blue, a green, a grey) and keep the one with the best score.
- Fix lightness first. Lightness changes the score a lot. Once a guess is in the 80s, try a lighter and a darker version of it.
- Use hex codes to probe. You can guess any hex code, even if it isn't a named color. It won't win, but its score tells you whether you're getting warmer.
- Then switch to names. The answer is always a name from the active list, so once you're above 95%, look through nearby names in the suggestions or the 3D Explorer.
- Mind the screen. Very dark or very saturated colors can look different on different screens; trust the score more than your eyes.
Sharing and saving
After you win, press Share Result to copy a spoiler-free summary (your number of tries, a row of colored squares and a link to the same puzzle). Your progress is saved automatically in your browser. To move it to another device, open Saved Games and use Copy backup code, then paste the code on the other device.
FAQ
Why did a color that looks close get a low score?
Our eyes are easily fooled by surrounding colors and screen settings. The score uses a standard model of human vision, so it is consistent for everyone, even when two colors "feel" closer than they measure.
My color name wasn't accepted. Why?
Names must exist in the active color list. Try a different spelling, pick from the suggestions, or type a hex code instead.
Does Colordle work offline?
Yes. Once the page has loaded, the puzzle and your guesses work without a connection. Community stats fill in when you're back online, and an offline win is counted then.
Is it free?
Yes. Colordle is free to play, with no account needed. Ads help support its development.