What is Limina?
Limina is a free daily word puzzle that runs in your browser. Each day at midnight local time you get a new five-letter word to find, and you have six guesses to do it. The twist: instead of telling you which letters are right or wrong, Limina gives you clues about the order of the letters. Your job is to read those clues and reconstruct the word.
The core rules in 30 seconds
- Guess a valid five-letter word.
- If your guess shares at least two letters with the hidden word, you get a clue.
- Each clue contains two letters and is colour-coded green, orange, or purple.
- Use the clues to work out the order of the letters.
- Solve the word in six guesses or fewer.
That’s the whole game. The skill is in reading the clues.
How to read the three colour-coded clues
Every clue you receive pairs two letters, and the colour tells you what their relationship is in the hidden word.
| Clue | Example | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Green | M·N | The order is correct. M must come before N in the hidden word. |
| Orange | A·L | The order is wrong. L must come before A in the hidden word. |
| Purple | I·M | One of the letters appears twice, and the other letter occurs somewhere between them. |
Green: the order is correct
A green clue like M·N tells you that in the hidden word, M appears before N. It doesn’t tell you they’re adjacent — just that M comes first somewhere. If you later learn more about where one of them sits, you can narrow down the other.
Orange: the order is wrong
An orange clue like A·L is the opposite: the order you guessed is wrong, so L must come before A in the hidden word. Again, they’re not necessarily next to each other; you only know the relative order.
Purple: a double letter is involved
Purple is the trickiest. A clue like I·M means one of those letters appears twice in the hidden word, and the other letter appears somewhere between the two copies. In this example, it could mean I·M·I or M·I·M. Don’t assume the letters are adjacent — there may be other letters in between.
A clue never tells you that two letters sit side by side. It only tells you their relative order (or, for purple, that a letter repeats with the other in between).
No clue is still a clue
You only get a clue when your guess shares at least two letters with the hidden word. So if a guess produces no clue at all, don’t rule out all five letters — one of them may still be in the answer. It just means you didn’t hit two or more. This is a common trap for new players, and it’s worth remembering before you abandon a promising set of letters.
When you’re down to one guess
If you’re stuck with one guess left, Limina has a built-in lifeline: you can send your clues to a friend and solve it together. The “Ask a friend” option shares the clues you’ve gathered so far, so someone else can take a fresh look at the order.
Practice before the daily puzzle
If you’re new, you don’t have to jump straight into the daily puzzle. Limina offers practice mode with unlimited practice words, and practice solves don’t count toward your streak or stats — so you can experiment freely. There’s also a guided practice mode with step-by-step tips on reading the clues, and a 30-second starter puzzle that walks you through the basics.
A simple first-guess strategy
- Start with five different, common letters. The letters that appear most often in hidden words are A, E, I, O, R, S, T, L, and N — about half of all hidden words contain an E. ALERT, SLATE, and IRATE are all good openers.
- Read whatever clue you get and adjust the order of those letters.
- Keep guessing valid five-letter words, using each clue to refine the order.
- If you get a purple clue, think about which letter might repeat.
The daily puzzle resets at midnight local time, so there’s always a fresh word waiting. Take your first guess, read the colours, and the order will start to reveal itself.
