Cowordle: race a friend to the same word

How to play Cowordle with a friend

Tap Start a race and you get a private link. Send it to one friend by text, chat or email. When they open it and tap Join, a short countdown runs on both screens and the race begins at the same moment for both of you.

• You both chase the same hidden five-letter word, each on your own board.
• Each of you has six guesses, and every guess must be a real word.
• Green means the right letter in the right spot, yellow means it is in the word somewhere else, and gray means it is not in the word at all.
• The first player to solve it wins. If you both use all six guesses, or ten minutes pass, it is a draw.

New to the clues? Our how to play guide walks through them with examples.

Watch your friend's colors, not their letters

Next to your board sits a small copy of your friend's board. It fills in as they play, a couple of seconds after each guess, but it only shows colors. You can see that they found three letters in the right spot on their second try, and that is a real hint about how close they are, but never which letters they used. Their words appear only when the race ends, along with the answer.

Running out of guesses does not end the race for the other player. If you miss on your sixth try, your friend keeps going until they solve it or run out too, so a careful player can still win after a fast one stumbles.

How to win a Cowordle race

A race changes the usual trade between speed and safety. Solving in four guesses is only good if your friend has not already done it in three. A few habits help:

• Use an opener you know by heart, so the first guess takes no time at all. Our best starting words list has strong ones.
• Watch the clock in your head, not just the board. If your friend lights up four greens, a quick guess at a likely answer beats a slow, perfect probe.
• When you are behind, take the risk. A guess that could be the answer gives you a chance to win; a safe guess that only gathers letters rarely catches up.

After the race, tap Rematch. Both of you move to a new word together, and the score at the top keeps count of wins across your rematches.

What happened to the original Cowordle?

The first Cowordle site now sends visitors to Victordle on Britannica Games, a head-to-head game with two modes: one where players take turns, and a duel where each player gets six tries and sees the other's progress. Our race works like that duel: the same word, two boards side by side, first to solve it wins. It runs in your browser with nothing to install, and there is no account and no random matching with strangers. You only ever play the person you send the link to.

A race keeps only a random code, a seat key saved in each browser and the guesses with their times, and it is deleted an hour after the last move. Our privacy policy has the details.

More ways to play

Want a word to send that your friend solves on their own time? Make a puzzle with your own word. For a solo challenge, play the daily puzzle, or try two boards at once in Dordle and four in Quordle. See our list of games like Wordle or every way to play on Vowelkit.

This is Vowelkit's own two-player race, with our own word list. It is not affiliated with Cowordle, Victordle, Britannica or Wordle.