There was a particular moment in my life when I looked into the Internet to search for the ultimate tip that would make me the best Wordle player. At that point, I was trying to obey all the principles of ADIEU and CRANE, AUDIO and STERN and optimize frequency of letters used in words by some Redditor. But none of that seemed to help me at all. Only one switch in Wordle Unlimited settings proved to be effective. I am going to tell you how in this article.

How Hard Mode Works

To comprehend the principle of Hard Mode in Wordle Unlimited is pretty simple. All the letters that you have guessed should be present in all further guesses. When your third guess brings you the green E in the second position and orange R somewhere else, all further guesses should include E in the second position and R. At first, it might seem irrelevant. However, after using it, it totally changes your approach. You cannot afford spending your guesses checking five different letters at once. It was my usual approach.

Why My Approach Was Completely Wrong

My approach before enabling Hard Mode in Wordle Unlimited was the following: the first guess should be based on the most popular opener. The second guess to test five new letters with the word totally unrelated to anything. The third guess to check another word unrelated to anything if there were no green tiles yet. Then you should try to fit in the letters that you got in the fourth, fifth and sixth guesses somehow. Such an approach could sometimes lead to success. Nevertheless, usually, I had to solve puzzles in five-six tries. The main point is that I neglected the word itself and just tried to guess the letters.

How This One Constraint Brought the Clear Picture

When I decided to give Hard Mode a try in Wordle Unlimited, my very first attempt after switching to it turned out impossible to solve in less than three guesses. I could not afford making random guesses anymore. You should use the constraints that you have received to guess possible words. These ten seconds of thinking brought me the realization that I can form the image of the word pattern or the intuition of the combination of letters that sounds natural in English words. Patterns like ight, ound, tion and ough became clear to me, and I started guessing the words according to their patterns rather than guessing random letters like in bingo with the dictionary.

How I Got Results That I Could Never Get Before

During several weeks of playing Wordle Unlimited in Hard Mode, my average number of tries decreased from 4.5 to 3.8. In addition, I started solving the puzzles in two-three tries more frequently than I did before. Nevertheless, the main result that I got from using Hard Mode is that my brain started recognizing the patterns of letters quicker. It even helped me in Time Mode when you cannot afford to lose time. I started understanding that regular players who play this game for years use Hard Mode for the same reason – it makes you more efficient in the game.

How No Tip Article Has Ever Helped Me With That

The main problem of the tip articles is that they are, by definition, the shortcuts and do not allow learning the process. Once you receive the tip about the best opening word, you just remember it and use it forever without developing your intuition. When you receive the list of strategies, you use them without comprehending why they work this way. But the thing is that Hard Mode is not a shortcut. It just disables the possibility of lazy playing and everything else is up to you to learn. That is why it works, and that is why no tip article cannot help you as much as the week of Hard Mode playing.

How to Turn on Hard Mode on Wordle Unlimited

Enabling Hard Mode on wordleunlimited.dev is really easy. You should just click the gear icon in the top right corner of the screen to open the settings menu and then scroll down to the Hard Mode toggle that is explicitly marked with the description "revealed hints must be reused". Flip it on, and the setting will be saved for your next game. It is as easy to turn it off whenever you want. I do not disable it myself anymore as the regular mode seems to be too easy for me. Which is, by the way, a pleasant problem to have.

Conclusion

Hard Mode in Wordle Unlimited is not the gimmick. It really is the only thing that helped me to improve my Wordle skills better than any tip article, strategy guide or the list of optimal opening words that I found in the Internet. If you feel like you are not improving your skills at all because your solves are always stuck at four or five tries, just go to wordleunlimited.dev, press the settings button and turn the Hard Mode toggle on. Play several games a day during a week, and you will see the improvement. No article can teach you something that you learn through forced thinking. And Hard Mode is exactly that forced thinking.