How to Win at Variants: Strategy & Tips
Updated January 2, 2026.
So let me guess. You are already playing Variants once a day, but your completion times are slower than your friends and you haven’t even landed on the leaderboard once!
That feeling hits home. Variants seems like a simple game but that feeling of not conquering an easy game really stings.
Fear not however! Beating the competition in Variants doesn’t require you to memorize every 5-letter word in the dictionary. There are more than 10,000 5-letter words so it makes absolutely no sense to do that.
It just requires a few techniques and adjustments. And practicing those techniques over time and refining them will land you on top of the global leaderboard in no time!
But before we get to the techniques, let’s make sure you are 100% familiar with the rules. Sometimes, it could even be the fact that you didn’t realize a simple rule of the game that would’ve slowed you down.
How to play
- The objective is simple. Form 5 words, where each word contains a different letter from today’s word. Each of the 5 words are called ‘Variants’, hence the name of the game.
- Each Variant can contain only one letter from today’s word. That letter has to be different than the starting letter of the respective Variant. (remember each Variant’s starting letter is a letter from today’s word).
- Sometimes, today’s word may contain repeated letters (i.e. NEWER, DEEDS, SPILL, EATEN, etc). The rules still don’t change, it’s just a different strategy (more on this later).
- And remember, if a starting letter of a Variant is repeated within same Variant, that is allowed.
Now that you we are clear here, let’s move onto the good stuff: strategies to beat your friends!
Strategies to beat your friends
1. Form words with tough letters first.
Some letters of the alphabet appear less often in words, especially 5-letter words. For example, if one of the letters from today’s word is X, then what you want to do is pick a Variant row that is easiest to form a word that contains X in it. And once you do that, the hardest letter is out of the way.
2. Have a go-to list of words ready in mind.
Several letters have many 5-letter words. For example, letters like A, E, S, T, D, N, R have many 5 letter words and if you can recall at least a few words for each letter quickly, then when you play the game, you can easily test with those words.
Also, there are also letters that don’t have many 5 letter words that start with them. Examples would be Q, X, or K.
3. Prioritize Repeated letters
If Today’s word contains 2 of the same letter, prioritize forming Variants with those 2 letters. This is so you don’t have to worry about this in the end.
For example, let’s say today’s word is ‘NEWER’. You would want to prioritize forming Variants with the letters E and W. E because it is repeated and W because there are not as many 5-letter words that contain W compared to letters like A, E, S, T, N, R, I.
4. Use a search engine (It’s not cheating)
I know. Reading this you feel like you are defeated, but the truth is most people aren’t walking around having memorized 1000s of 5-letter words.
The underlying objective of Variants was never to help you become a walking dictionary. Its core purpose was and always will be to help you solve problems quickly.
If you can’t think of any Variants to form given a particular letter from today’s given word, hop onto your favorite search engine and run a quick search. No harm, no foul.
5. Use Pen and Paper to help
Sometimes the old ways work best.
While Variants user interface keeps track of what letters have already been used, it also helps when you write it out.
And writing also helps your brain come up with words that can be used to complete the game.
There’s something about when the pen hits the paper that gets that thing between your ears going more effectively than a keyboard.
And there you have it! A few strategies to help you conquer the Variants universe!
Good luck and see you on the leaderboard!
If you have any strategies that you would like to share to the Variants community, we would love to hear it. Just shoot us an email at [email protected] with the subject line: Variants gameplay strategy and we will take a look to see if we can add it onto this page.