Survivle

Survivle is a daily word game that flips Wordle inside out: instead of finding the hidden five-letter word, your goal is to dodge it for as long as you can. Every green and yellow letter you uncover gets locked into your next guess, and gray letters are off the table for good, so each round squeezes your options tighter. You only win by surviving seven or more guesses without accidentally spelling the answer.

What is Survivle?

Survivle is a daily word puzzle that takes the familiar five-letter Wordle grid and reverses the goal. Instead of racing to find the hidden word in as few tries as possible, you are trying to stay away from it for as long as you can. Each day the game has one secret five-letter word, and your job is to keep typing valid words that are definitely not the answer while still obeying every clue the board gives you. A run only counts as a win once you have survived seven or more guesses, since reaching the word in six or fewer would have been an ordinary Wordle victory.

The feature that defines Survivle is its strict, mandatory hard mode. In regular Wordle, hard mode asks you to reuse confirmed letters, but Survivle goes further: every green and yellow letter you have ever revealed must appear in each new guess, greens locked to their correct columns, and you can never reuse a gray letter that has been ruled out. Because every guess narrows the field of legal words, the board steadily boxes you in. The tension comes from that shrinking space. As the rounds go on, fewer and fewer five-letter words satisfy all the constraints, and you have to keep finding ones that still are not the answer. The same green, yellow, and gray feedback that helps a Wordle player close in is the thing actively working against you here.

Survivle was built by a developer who goes by lazyguyy, who signs off in the game as Jonas, and it first appeared in March 2022 during the wave of Wordle spin-offs. He credits two clear inspirations: Josh Wardle's original Wordle for the format, and qntm's Absurdle for the adversarial, anti-solver twist on the idea. It runs entirely in the browser as a free, open-source project hosted on GitHub, with no account, app install, or payment involved.

The game keeps local statistics for your daily runs, tracking figures such as your average number of guesses and your win rate, and it offers quality-of-life options like a dark theme and a high-contrast mode. Beyond the once-a-day puzzle, there is a random mode for extra rounds that do not affect your tracked stats, which is handy when you want to practice the unusual logic without spending your daily attempt. Survivle tends to attract Wordle veterans who want a fresh angle: the openings feel relaxed, but the endgame becomes a genuine logic puzzle as you steer carefully around the one word that would end your streak. It rewards patience and careful elimination rather than quick intuition.

How to play Survivle

1. Open Survivle in your browser and choose the daily puzzle, then type any valid five-letter word as your opening guess.
2. Read the color feedback: green means a letter is correct and in the right spot, yellow means the letter is in the word but in the wrong spot, and gray means the letter is not in the word at all.
3. On every later guess, you must reuse all of your green letters in their correct columns and include all of your yellow letters somewhere, while never reusing a gray letter.
4. Within those locked constraints, deliberately pick a word that is not the hidden answer so your run continues.
5. Keep making legal, wrong guesses round after round, watching the pool of remaining valid words shrink as the board tightens.
6. Survive seven or more guesses without ever entering the secret word to win, then share your result or compare it against your tracked stats.

Tips and strategy

• Spend your free letter slots wisely: when greens and yellows are forced into a guess, fill the remaining open positions with fresh, untested letters so you reveal new information while still avoiding the answer.
• Keep a running mental list of which five-letter words still satisfy every constraint, because the danger word is hiding somewhere in that shrinking set.
• Before you submit a tightly constrained guess, double-check that the word you are about to type is not the solution itself, since the legal options can quietly narrow down to the answer.
• Early on, try to collect yellows rather than greens when you can, because greens lock columns and box you in faster than yellows do.
• Use gray letters as a shield: stacking up ruled-out letters reduces the number of words that could be the answer, which makes it easier to steer clear of it later.
• Practice in random mode first to get a feel for the inverted hard-mode logic without risking your daily run.

Good to know

Resets

New daily puzzle once per day; a random mode is also available for untracked rounds

Cost

Free, no account or install required

Goal

Avoid the hidden word; a run counts as a win at seven or more guesses

Word length

Five letters, played in mandatory strict hard mode

Creator

lazyguyy (Jonas), first released March 2022

Platform

Browser-based, open source on GitHub; works on desktop and mobile

Survivle FAQ

Is Survivle free?

Yes. Survivle is completely free to play in any web browser, with no account, sign-up, or app download needed. It is an open-source project hosted on GitHub.

How do you win Survivle?

You win by surviving seven or more guesses without ever entering the hidden word. Because reaching the answer in six tries or fewer is what a normal Wordle win looks like, only a longer run counts as a victory here.

How is Survivle different from Wordle?

The objective is reversed. In Wordle you try to find the secret word quickly, while in Survivle you try to avoid it for as long as possible. It also forces a strict hard mode where every revealed green and yellow letter must be reused and gray letters can never come back.

Is Survivle related to Wordle?

It is an independent spin-off inspired by Josh Wardle's Wordle and qntm's Absurdle, built by a developer who goes by lazyguyy. It is not made or owned by the makers of Wordle.

Is there a random mode in Survivle?

Yes. Alongside the once-a-day puzzle there is a random mode for extra rounds. Those random games do not count toward your tracked daily statistics, so they are useful for practice.