NBA Wordle
Guess the daily NBA player by their last name — every answer is a big name: All-Stars from the 1970s to today, plus today's standouts. Any letters count.
How to play NBA Wordle
NBA Wordle is the basketball version of the daily word game: guess an NBA player's surname in six tries. The answer is always a name a basketball fan would recognise — All-Stars from the 1970s to the present day, plus the current generation's standouts — and it is between three and twelve letters long. A new surname goes live every day at midnight US Eastern, and everyone plays the same one.
The rules
Type a surname and submit it. Each letter is then colour-coded: green means the letter is correct and in the right position, yellow means the letter appears in the name but somewhere else, and grey means it does not appear at all. You have six attempts. Only the surname counts — for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar the answer is ABDUL-JABBAR, and for Shaquille O'Neal it is O'NEAL.
Hyphens, apostrophes and accents
Punctuation is never something you have to guess. Hyphens and apostrophes are shown to you from the start as locked tiles, so a name like Gilgeous-Alexander reveals its hyphen immediately and you only solve the letters. Accented characters are normalised to plain letters, so Vucevic is spelled exactly as it sounds on an English keyboard. Any real letters count as a valid guess — you are not restricted to a dictionary of player names, so you can freely burn a turn on a letter-probing word.
The hint
Each daily puzzle carries an optional career hint — a short line about the player behind the answer. It stays hidden behind a button so purists can ignore it entirely, and revealing it does not cost you a guess or break your streak. It is there for the days when you have five greys and no idea.
Strategy
Basketball surnames are not distributed like ordinary English words. Double letters are unusually common, and a large share of answers end in -S, -N or -Y. A strong opening guess loads up on vowels and the most frequent consonants rather than trying to be clever. Once you have a green or two, resist the urge to guess a player you like the sound of — spend the middle turns testing letters you have not yet ruled in or out, and save your committed guess for turn five or six.
Tips
- Open with a vowel-heavy surname — you learn far more from three vowels than from a lucky consonant.
- Watch for double letters; they show up in NBA surnames more often than in ordinary words.
- A locked hyphen or apostrophe is free information — it usually narrows the answer to a handful of names immediately.
- If two candidates fit, guess the one that also tests an untried letter.
- The hint costs you nothing. Use it before you lose the streak, not after.
Frequently asked questions
- Do I guess the first name or the surname?
- Always the surname. Suffixes like Jr., Sr. and III are stripped, so Jaren Jackson Jr. is simply JACKSON.
- Does using the hint break my streak?
- No. The hint is free and does not cost a guess. Only failing to solve the puzzle in six tries ends a streak.
- Can I play more than one round a day?
- The daily puzzle is once a day, but practice mode offers unlimited random surnames that do not affect your streak or stats.
- Are current players included?
- Yes. The answer pool mixes All-Stars from the 1970s onward with current standouts, so both a 1980s legend and this season's breakout are fair game.
More NBA daily games
Own the Court — Name players. Claim hexes · Mystery Player — Guess the hidden star from clues · NBA Connections — Find four groups of four · Higher or Lower — Call the stat. Ride the streak · NBA Bingo — Fill the card in 50 players