No, not fully. Wordle's daily answer list excludes proper nouns entirely and rules out most past-tense verbs — specifically any past-tense verb ending in “-ED.” It still allows irregular past-tense words like BROKE or FOUND, plus everyday words that happen to double as names. The rules are looser for guesses than for answers.
Does Wordle use past-tense verbs?
Wordle avoids past-tense verbs as answers only when they end in “-ED” — the game has never used a solution like WALKED or JUMPED. Irregular past-tense verbs that don't follow that pattern are fair game: FOUND ran as puzzle #282 (2022-03-28) and BROKE as puzzle #672 (2023-04-22), alongside other real answers like WRUNG, DWELT, and LEAPT.
The “-ED but not a past-tense verb” trap
The rule is about the letters, not the grammar. A word ending in “-ED” that isn't actually a past-tense verb is still eligible, because Wordle's filter targets the ending pattern most past-tense verbs share, not every word that happens to carry it. TWEED ran as puzzle #121 (2021-10-18) and FRIED as puzzle #966 (2024-02-10) — neither is a past-tense verb, so the exclusion never applied to them. As a guess, none of this matters: you can type any past-tense verb, -ED or not, purely to test which letters show up green or yellow.
Are proper nouns and names allowed in Wordle?
No. Wordle's answer list has never included a proper noun — no personal names, no place names, no brand names. That rule has held since Josh Wardle built the original word list in 2021, and it hasn't changed under The New York Times, which has owned Wordle since acquiring it on January 31, 2022.
What trips people up is that some words are both a common word and a familiar name at once. HARRY is a verb meaning “to harass” as well as a common given name, so it would be eligible as an answer on the strength of its verb meaning, not its name meaning — it just hasn't actually run as the daily answer yet. The same logic covers words like ROSE, MARCH, or FRANK: Wordle would accept them because a non-proper-noun definition exists, never because a name does. As guesses, actual proper nouns like JAMES or PARIS are accepted too — the game will still color their letters — but the day's answer will never be one.
Is a Wordle answer always a noun?
No. Most Wordle answers are nouns simply because nouns are the largest category of English five-letter words, but the answer list isn't restricted to them. Verbs, adjectives, and adverbs all show up regularly — SMASH, UNTIE, HURRY, DEBUG, and SQUAT have all been used as answers, for example. The only part-of-speech rule Wordle enforces is the proper-noun exclusion above; beyond that, any valid, common five-letter English word is fair game regardless of its grammatical role.
Wordle word-type quick reference
| Word type | Allowed as a guess? | Allowed as the answer? | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regular past tense (-ED) | Yes | No | WALKED |
| Irregular past tense | Yes | Yes | BROKE, FOUND |
| Regular plural (-S/-ES) | Yes | No | SHOES |
| Irregular plural | Yes | Yes | WOMEN, GEESE |
| Proper noun / name | Yes (to test letters) | No | JAMES, PARIS |
| Word that's also a name | Yes | Yes, on its other meaning | HARRY (verb) |
| Verb / adjective / adverb | Yes | Yes | SMASH, DEBUG |
| Abbreviation or acronym | No | No | NASA, FBI |
Plurals follow the same guess-vs-answer split as past tense and proper nouns — see the full plural rules breakdown for the complete list of exceptions.
Why does Wordle rule out these word types?
The restriction is baked into the original word list. When Josh Wardle built Wordle, his partner filtered roughly 13,000 candidate five-letter words down to about 2,309 that a broad, casual audience would recognize — deliberately steering away from proper nouns, obscure plurals, and regular -ED verbs so that every day's answer felt fair and guessable without specialist vocabulary knowledge. The New York Times inherited that same filtered list in 2022 and has trimmed a handful of entries since, but it hasn't loosened the core proper-noun, plural, or past-tense rules.
That's also why the guess list is so much more permissive than the answer list: letting players type PARIS, SHOES, or WALKED as a guess doesn't cost the puzzle's fairness, since none of those can ever be the actual solution — they're only there to help you eliminate letters. Once you've locked in which letters are green, yellow, or gray, run them through the Wordle solver to narrow down which real answers are still possible, or check any borderline guess against the word checker before you spend a turn on it.
Sources and further reading
- The New York Times Wordle for the live game and current rules.
- Can Wordle answers be plural? for the full plural exception list.
- Who created Wordle? for the Josh Wardle and New York Times timeline.
- Every Wordle answer ever for the archive used to confirm the puzzle numbers cited above.
- Editorial policy for how figures on this site are checked.