Daydle is a free daily puzzle game that shows you a famous historical event and asks you to guess the year it happened. You get six attempts to enter a four-digit year, and after each guess the digit tiles change colour — green for correct, blue for one away, red for wrong — to guide you toward the answer.
What Is Daydle?
Daydle takes the Wordle formula and swaps words for years. Each day brings a new historical event — the first modern Olympic Games, the fall of the Berlin Wall, a famous invention — and your job is to pin down the four-digit year it occurred (dlegames.org; wordle-nyt.org).
The game resets at midnight local time, so there is exactly one puzzle per day — the same one everyone else is solving, which makes it highly shareable, just like Wordle (world3dmap.com).
How to Play Daydle
The Rules
- Read the historical clue. The game presents today's event, for example: "The first modern Olympic Games open in Athens."
- Enter a four-digit year. Use the on-screen number pad to type a year guess.
- Study the colour feedback. Each digit tile changes colour after your guess.
- Refine and repeat. You have 6 attempts to land all four digits. Miss all six and the daily challenge ends — come back tomorrow (wordle-nyt.org; food-le.com).
What the Tile Colours Mean
| Colour | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Green | Correct digit in the correct position — lock it in |
| Blue | Incorrect, but only one away (±1) — try the neighbouring value |
| Red | Wrong — and the game stops evaluating later digits |
| White / grey | Unevaluated or unknown |
The red-tile rule is the game's signature twist: because evaluation stops at a red digit, you should always repair the earliest unresolved position before drawing conclusions from the boxes that follow (dlegames.org; heardlewordle.io).
A Worked Example
Imagine the clue is "The first modern Olympic Games open in Athens":
- Guess 1875 → `1` green, `8` green, `7` red, `5` white. The year starts with 18, but the third digit is not 7 — and the fourth digit gave no information.
- Guess 1885 → `1` green, `8` green, `8` blue, `5` blue. The third digit is one away from 8, the fourth one away from 5.
- Guess 1896 → all green. Correct — the Games opened in Athens in 1896.
Daydle Strategy: 6 Tips
- Start with the era, not a random year. Identify the century or historical period from the event description before typing anything — a sensible first guess yields far more useful feedback (dlegames.org).
- Lock in green digits. Once a position is confirmed, treat it as settled and spend future guesses on the uncertain slots only.
- Read blue digits as ±1. A blue `8` means 7 or 9 — it does not mean the whole year is one year away.
- Respect the red stop-rule. Fix the earliest red position first; digits after a red tile told you nothing.
- Use binary search for big ranges. If you only know the century, guess the midpoint (e.g. 1950 for the 1900s) and halve the range each time.
- Anchor on what you know. Famous dates make great reference points: 1969 (Moon landing), 1945 (WWII ends), 1789 (French Revolution), 1066 (Hastings).
Daydle vs Other Daily Games
| Game | What You Guess | Attempts | Knowledge Tested |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daydle | Year of a historical event | 6 | History, chronology |
| Wordle | 5-letter word | 6 | Vocabulary |
| Heardle | Song from a clip | 6 | Music |
| Framed | Film from stills | 6 | Cinema |
| Globle | Country on a map | Unlimited | Geography |
Fans of daily deduction games should also try our Quordle guide and the cryptic-crossword-flavoured Parseword guide.
Why History Fans and Teachers Love Daydle
Daydle does something most trivia games do not: it turns passive history knowledge into an active deduction skill. You may know that the Berlin Wall fell "around 1990," but Daydle forces you to commit to an exact year — and the colour feedback teaches you the timeline by trial and error. Miss with 1985, get a blue on the last digit, and you have learned something permanent about the late 1980s.
That is why the game gets recommended as a classroom-friendly warm-up: each daily puzzle takes five minutes, it rewards chronological thinking rather than memorised lists, and the "one puzzle per day" format makes it a low-effort habit. Playing alongside a routine of daily word puzzles also keeps the deduction muscles sharp in a different direction — dates instead of letters.
Where to Play Daydle
Daydle is a browser game, free to play with no download. The official site is daydle.com, and the game is also hosted on Wordle-style game portals such as dlegames.org and wordle-nyt.org. A new puzzle appears at midnight local time each day.
Using Daydle to Learn History
Daydle is secretly an education tool disguised as a game. Playing it deliberately builds a genuine sense of historical time.
- Anchor the big dates. Start by memorising a skeleton of landmark years — 1066, 1492, 1776, 1789, 1914, 1945, 1969. Every guess becomes a comparison against these anchors: before or after?
- Learn by century. When you miss, note which century the answer was in and one fact about it. Over weeks you build a mental map of what belongs where.
- Use the before/after feedback. Each wrong guess tells you whether the event was earlier or later. Treat it as a binary search: split the remaining range in half with every guess.
- Discuss answers with friends. Daydle's shared daily puzzle makes it social. Explaining why you guessed a year cements the history far better than playing alone.
What is Daydle?
Daydle is a free daily game in which you guess the year of a historical event. You enter four-digit years and get colour-coded feedback across six attempts.
How do you play Daydle?
Read the day’s historical event, guess a four-digit year, and use the tile colours (green = correct, blue = one away, red = wrong) to refine your next guess within six tries.
What do the colours mean in Daydle?
Green means the digit is correct and in the right position; blue means it is one away (±1); red means it is wrong and stops evaluation of later digits; white means unevaluated.
How many guesses do you get in Daydle?
Six. If you fail to guess the year within six attempts, the daily challenge ends and you must wait for the next day’s puzzle.
Is Daydle free?
Yes. Daydle is free to play in the browser, with no download or account required on the official site and mirror portals.
What happens if I guess the year wrong in Daydle?
Each wrong guess reveals colour feedback on your digits, narrowing the possibilities. The game also shows whether the event occurred before or after some guesses.
Can you play old Daydle puzzles?
The standard version offers one puzzle per day at midnight local time. Some mirror sites maintain archives, but the core game is daily-only.
Is Daydle related to Wordle?
Daydle uses Wordle-style mechanics — six attempts, colour-coded feedback, one puzzle per day — but you guess years instead of words. It is an independent fan-made game, not affiliated with the New York Times.
What is the official Daydle website?
The official site is daydle.com, and the game is also hosted on Wordle-style game portals such as dlegames.org and wordle-nyt.org.
Does Daydle work on mobile?
Yes. Daydle is a browser game with an on-screen number pad, so it plays just as well on phones and tablets as on a desktop.
How do I get better at guessing years in Daydle?
Memorise anchor dates for major events and use binary search: each guess’s before/after feedback halves the remaining range. Over time you will develop a feel for which century an event belongs to.
Is Daydle suitable for classrooms?
Yes — teachers use it as a warm-up activity. The daily format, the historical content and the low-stakes guessing make it ideal for building chronological thinking.