It’s the weekend, it’s Wordle, and it’s time to put those brain cells to work. Today’s puzzle is a reasonably straightforward one that shouldn’t cause you too many problems, though I doubt there’ll be that many really high scores either.
Fancy some Wordle hints before you begin? Then read on for a selection of clues to guide you in the right direction. And if you don’t have time to play at all, you can see the answer, too. Want more word-based fun? My Quordle today page contains hints and answers for that game.
SPOILER WARNING: Information about today’s Wordle answers are below, so don’t read on if you don’t want to see them.
Marc is TechRadar’s UK Editor in Chief and has been playing Wordle for more than a year. He’s authored dozens of articles on the game for TechRadar and its sister site Tom’s Guide, including a detailed analysis of the most common letters in every position. His streak recently reached the 460 mark and he’ll be inconsolable if he loses it. Yes, he takes it all too seriously.
Wordle hints (game #686) – clue #1 – Vowels
How many vowels does today’s Wordle have?
• Wordle today has two vowels*.
* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).
Wordle hints (game #686) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is A.
A is a reasonably common starting letter in Wordle: 140 games begin with this letter. It ranks 6th among starting letters, behind S, C, B, T and P.
Wordle hints (game #686) – clue #3 – repeated letters
Does today’s Wordle have any repeated letters?
• There are no repeated letters in today’s Wordle.
Repeated letters are quite common in the game, with 748 of the 2,309 Wordle answers containing one. However, it’s still more likely that a Wordle doesn’t have one.
Wordle hints (game #686) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is R.
R is a very common letter to end a Wordle answer – it’s actually the 4th most common there, behind E, Y and T.
Wordle hints (game #686) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for Wordle hints today? Don’t worry, I’ll give you one more for game #686.
- Today’s Wordle answer is an emotion.
If you just want to know today’s Wordle answer now, simply scroll down – but I’d always recommend trying to solve it on your own first. We’ve got lots of Wordle tips and tricks to help you, including a guide to the best Wordle start words.
If you don’t want to know today’s answer then DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER BECAUSE IT IS PRINTED BELOW. So don’t say you weren’t warned!
Today’s Wordle answer (game #686)
Today’s Wordle answer (game #686) is… ANGER.
As with yesterday’s BELOW, this almost seems too common a word to be a Wordle answer, but a look at the past Wordle answers list confirms that no, the NYT has not yet started repeating solutions. Which is just as well, as I couldn’t face having to tackle the likes of Thursday’s GUPPY a second time.
ANGER is a much easier Wordle to solve than GUPPY all round. There are no repeated letters and it doesn’t have many other doppelganger words that differ by only one letter – though the far less common word AUGER does do that, admittedly.
WordleBot says it has an average score of 3.9, placing it on the slightly easier side of things. That said, your choice of the best Wordle starting words might well have made it a very easy puzzle indeed: CRANE left just six possible solutions and the most popular option, ADIEU, only 16. A good second guess with either of those and you’d have had an easy 3/6, with a 2/6 a genuine possibility if you got lucky.
My pick, STARE, wasn’t so helpful; I still had 80 words left, according to WordleBot. That doesn’t surprise me, because getting three yellows on the first guess is generally a lot less useful than getting one green and even one yellow, particularly when the letters that turn yellow are as common as E, A and R.
I needed to know where those three went, so played CLEAR next; an -ER ending was a possibility, but I decided I could establish that on my third guess.
This was a bad choice on my part, because CLEAR only reduced my options down to 27, which was still a lot for this stage of the game. I needed a very good third guess, so decided to play a word I knew couldn’t be correct in order to further narrow things down: RAGED. I’d kept the R in the word, but at the start, in order to rule out the likes of RAVER and RARER, while the G was there to cover off GAZER, WAGER, PAGER, EAGER and indeed ANGER. The D helped with WADER and FADER.
This was “a solid guess”, WordleBot said, damning me with faint praise while suggesting I should have played GAWKY. OK, ‘bot – you might be right but my choice did work, reducing my possible solutions list to just two, ANGER and AUGER.
I’ll readily admit that I didn’t actually consider AUGER, so played ANGER next and scored a just over par 4/6.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #685)
In a different time zone where it’s still Friday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #685, too.
- Wordle yesterday had two vowels.
- The first letter in yesterday’s Wordle answer was B.
- There are no repeated letters in yesterday’s Wordle.
- The last letter in yesterday’s Wordle was W.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is a relative position.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #685)
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #685) was… BELOW.
It always surprises me when super-common words appear in Wordle. How have we not already had BELOW? But we definitely haven’t; I even checked the past Wordle answers list after the game to be sure.
Common word it may be, but it has one particularly uncommon characteristic: that W at the end. You don’t get Ws appearing in the fifth and final spot in a Wordle very often; there are just 17 games that end in one, compared 422 that end in an E or 364 that finish with a Y.
There’s certainly no shame if it took you a while to find it today, although the other four letters are all much more common. B is the third most common starting letter (behind S and C) and E, L and O are just common letters everywhere.
That combination leads to an average score of 4.0, according to WordleBot, which coincidently was also my score today.
I started, as always, with my favorite of the best Wordle starting words: STARE. Unfortunately, this gave me just a yellow E and still left me with 249 possible answers. Not that most of the others were much better; SLATE left 95, but CRANE (275), TRACE (265) and ADIEU (241) were all in the same ballpark as mine.
I wanted to narrow down where that E went, so played BLEND next as it enabled me to also include four more common consonants. This worked very well, giving me green B and yellow L to add to the still-yellow E and cutting down my options to just six.
Unfortunately, I then screwed up my next guess. I’d (independently) found all of the six possibles: BELOW, BELCH, BEVEL, BEZEL, BELLY and BOWEL but didn’t play a word that would have guaranteed me getting a 4/6. WordleBot suggested after the game that COVES would have done the trick. I instead played BELIE and I have no idea why I did that! Clearly it couldn’t have been right (I knew the E couldn’t be at the end) and it didn’t help to narrow things down too much. It was just a stupid guess.
My fourth was much more successful, though. I figured BELOW was more likely than BELCH or BELLY so guessed that and got lucky. But I probably didn’t deserve my par 4 today.
Wordle answers: The past 50
I’ve been playing Wordle every day for more than a year now and have tracked all of the previous answers so I can help you improve your game. Here are the last 50 solutions starting with yesterday’s answer, or check out my past Wordle answers page for the full list.
- Wordle #685, Friday 5 May: BELOW
- Wordle #684, Thursday 4 May: GUPPY
- Wordle #683, Wednesday 3 May: HORDE
- Wordle #682, Tuesday 2 May: SULKY
- Wordle #681, Monday 1 May: RANGE
- Wordle #680, Sunday 30 April: PLAZA
- Wordle #679, Saturday 29 April: CEDAR
- Wordle #678, Friday 28 April: CIRCA
- Wordle #677, Thursday 27 April: LOGIC
- Wordle #676, Wednesday 26 April: METRO
- Wordle #675, Tuesday 25 April: JOKER
- Wordle #674, Monday 24 April: DITTO
- Wordle #673, Sunday 23 April: UNZIP
- Wordle #672, Saturday 22 April: BROKE
- Wordle #671, Friday 21 April: KAYAK
- Wordle #670, Thursday 20 April: PLATE
- Wordle #669, Wednesday 19 April: THUMP
- Wordle #668, Tuesday 18 April: HOUND
- Wordle #667, Monday 17 April: WHIFF
- Wordle #666, Sunday 16 April: DWELT
- Wordle #665, Saturday 15 April: AGONY
- Wordle #664, Friday 14 April: THIEF
- Wordle #663, Thursday 13 April: CARAT
- Wordle #662, Wednesday 12 April: BORAX
- Wordle #661, Tuesday 11 April: QUALM
- Wordle #660, Monday 10 April: UNDER
- Wordle #659, Sunday 9 April: SNAFU
- Wordle #658, Saturday 8 April: LEDGE
- Wordle #657, Friday 7 April: LOCUS
- Wordle #656, Thursday 6 April: LEAFY
- Wordle #655, Wednesday 5 April: SMASH
- Wordle #654, Tuesday 4 April: RATIO
- Wordle #653, Monday 3 April: FLORA
- Wordle #652, Sunday 2 April: STOCK
- Wordle #651, Saturday 1 April: MARCH
- Wordle #650, Friday 31 March: EVERY
- Wordle #649, Thursday 30 March: BREAD
- Wordle #648, Wednesday 29 March: BESET
- Wordle #647, Tuesday 28 March: HURRY
- Wordle #646, Monday 27 March: GUANO
- Wordle #645, Sunday 26 March: UNTIE
- Wordle #644, Saturday 25 March: VOTER
- Wordle #643, Friday 24 March: GROUT
- Wordle #642, Thursday 23 March: STAID
- Wordle #641, Wednesday 22 March: DUVET
- Wordle #640, Tuesday 21 March: TOUGH
- Wordle #639, Monday 20 March: GLOVE
- Wordle #638, Sunday 19 March: CREDO
- Wordle #637, Saturday 18 March: YACHT
What is Wordle?
If you’re on this page then you almost certainly know what Wordle is already, and indeed have probably been playing it for a while. And even if you’ve not been playing it, you must surely have heard of it by now, because it’s the viral word game phenomenon that took the world by storm last year and is still going strong in 2023.
We’ve got a full guide to the game in our What is Wordle page, but if you just want a refresher then here are the basics.
What is Wordle?
Wordle challenges you to guess a new five-letter word each day. You get six guesses, with each one revealing a little more information. If one of the letters in your guess is in the answer and in the right place, it turns green. If it’s in the answer but in the wrong place, it turns yellow. And if it’s not in the answer at all it turns gray. Simple, eh?
It’s played online via the Wordle website (opens in new tab) or the New York Times’ Crossword app (iOS (opens in new tab) / Android (opens in new tab)), and is entirely free.
Crucially, the answer is the same for everyone each day, meaning that you’re competing against the rest of the world, rather than just against yourself or the game. The puzzle then resets each day at midnight in your local time, giving you a new challenge, and the chance to extend your streak.
What are the Wordle rules?
The rules of Wordle are pretty straightforward, but with a couple of curveballs thrown in for good measure.
1. Letters that are in the answer and in the right place turn green.
2. Letters that are in the answer but in the wrong place turn yellow.
3. Letters that are not in the answer turn gray.
4. Answers are never plural.
5. Letters can appear more than once. So if your guess includes two of one letter, they may both turn yellow, both turn green, or one could be yellow and the other green.
6. Each guess must be a valid word in Wordle’s dictionary. You can’t guess ABCDE, for instance.
7. You do not have to include correct letters in subsequent guesses unless you play on Hard mode.
8. You have six guesses to solve the Wordle.
9. You must complete the daily Wordle before midnight in your timezone.
10. All answers are drawn from Wordle’s list of 2,309 solutions. However…
11. Wordle will accept a wider pool of words as guesses – some 10,000 of them. For instance, you can guess a plural such as WORDS. It definitely won’t be right (see point 4 above), but Wordle will accept it as a guess.
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