It’s time for your guide to today’s Wordle answer, featuring my commentary on the latest puzzle, plus a selection of hints designed to help you keep your streak going.
Don’t think you need any clues for Wordle today? No problem, just skip to my daily column. But remember: failure in this game is only ever six guesses away.
Want more word-based fun? My Quordle today page contains hints and answers for that game, which remains the best of all the main Wordle alternatives.
SPOILER WARNING: Today’s Wordle answer and hints are below, so don’t read on if you don’t want to see them.
Wordle hints (game #1012) – clue #1 – Vowels
How many vowels does today’s Wordle have?
• Wordle today has a vowel in one place*.
* 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 #1012) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is S.
S is the most common starting letter in the game, featuring in 365 of Wordle‘s 2,309 answers. In fact, it’s almost twice as likely to begin an answer as the next most common starting letter, C.
Wordle hints (game #1012) – 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 #1012) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is G.
G is not a common letter to end a Wordle answer – in fact only 41 of Wordle’s 2,309 games finish with one.
Wordle hints (game #1012) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1012.
- Today’s Wordle answer has been hurt by a piercing of the flesh.
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 #1012)
- NYT average score: 4.2
- My score: 3
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- Best start word performance*: SAINT (5 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: REALM (369)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1012) is… STUNG.
We’re now up to three tough games in a row, with STUNG having an average score of 4.2 following 4.4 and 4.5 on the previous two days. Should we consider this a horror run though? Not really. As with yesterday’s game, STUNG likely has a score of above 4.0 because there are lots of other words that start ST, meaning that people required an extra guess or two to narrow it down.
Looking at WordleBot’s analysis, lots of people played STING before STUNG, while STUNT, STUCK, STUMP, STUNK, STUFF and STUDY were all common guesses too. But unless you were a little reckless with your play you’re unlikely to have scored a 6/6 or even a fail – it’s not really difficult, just a little annoying.
I suspect there will be a few 3/6s today too, because a couple of the best start words cut down the options quite nicely. We’re not talking single-figure results – well, other than for SAINT, which is not a particularly common opener. But the 22 left by STARE and the 43 for SLATE are both acceptable tallies.
My random word today was REALM, and that left a more daunting 369 options. The fact that I still got home in three guesses was almost entirely due to luck.
With A and E already ruled out, I wanted to include two more vowels, so decided to go for I and O; as my analysis of every Wordle answer shows, these are both more common than U. The most common consonants I’d not played yet were T, N, S and C, but I couldn’t think of a word that used three of those plus the O and I. Actually, that’s not entirely true – I could have played TONIC or SONIC. But a C is not common at the end of a word, so instead I played POINT.
This worked really well. Like, really, really well: it gave me a green N, yellow T and cut my options to only two! I knew there was likely to be a U in the word now, so it wasn’t too hard to come up with STUNG and STUNK as the remaining possibles. There was no particularly reason to guess one over the other, but I couldn’t score lower than a 4/6 anyway, so it didn’t matter much. I went with STUNG and guessed right this time for a lucky 3/6.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1011)
In a different time zone where it’s still Tuesday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1011, too.
- Wordle yesterday had vowels in two places.
* 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).
- The first letter in yesterday’s Wordle answer was M.
M is a middling letter when it comes to starting a word. It sits 10th in the rankings, with 107 occurrences in the 2,309 answers.
- There were no repeated letters in yesterday’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.
- The last letter in yesterday’s Wordle was 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.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here’s an extra one for game #1011.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is the figurehead for a town or area.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1011)
- NYT average score: 4.4
- My score: 3
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- Best start word performance*: TASER, SANER (11 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: GNOME (46)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1011) was… MAYOR.
It’s been a while since we’ve had two really tough Wordles in a row. You’d probably have to go back to February, when we had a sequence of VERGE and REPEL (4.7 and 4.2) or just before that a run of EMBER (4.7), LEGGY (4.4), EXPEL (4.7) and BULKY (4.3).
We’re not quite at that level of difficulty yet, but MAYOR rates as a 4.3 (NB: upgraded to 4.4 by the end of the day) whereas Monday’s SALLY was at 4.5, so we’re in the same ballpark.
Is MAYOR really that hard, though? Well, yes and no. I don’t think too many people will fail it entirely, because none of the letters are truly uncommon and it couldn’t be described as an obscure word. The real problem is simply that MANOR and MAJOR were obvious alternatives, meaning that some people – maybe most people – will have used up a go or two ruling out one or both of those words.
I didn’t need to do that, because the N in MANOR was ruled out on my first guess, so it was never even on my shortlist. MAJOR was on my list, but I’d always choose MAYOR first, because J is such an uncommon letter in the game.
It’s certainly a lot less likely to appear than the Y that sits in the middle of MAYOR, although as I show in my analysis of every Wordle answer, that letter is only really common when used at the end of a solution. Y appears a mere 29 times in the center – although bear in mind that J only appears 27 times in total, so there was really only one way to go if you had to choose between those words.
As a postscript to all that I’ll also point out that both MANOR and MAJOR have been past Wordle answers, but I didn’t realize that while I was playing and neither did many other Wordlers by the looks of it.
My start word was GNOME, which was “distinctive” according to WordleBot, but lucky in turning up the O and M. The latter in particular was a good letter to have at this early stage, and it gave me an advantage over players of many of the best Wordle starting words. GNOME left me with 46 options, whereas CRANE, WordleBot’s favorite, left 80, and the popular STARE left 83. In fact, very few of the top choices were better than my random opener today.
My second guess, MOULT, was not so fortunate – to the extent that WordleBot only awarded it 7/99 for luck. It did turn the M green, however, and that was enough to cut down my options from 46 to six.
I’m ashamed to say that I could only find three of them: MAYOR, MAJOR and MAMBO. The others were MICRO, MACRO and MACHO. That oversight could have come back to haunt me, but not today – I played MAYOR next and gratefully accepted my 3/6.
Wordle answers: The past 50
I’ve been playing Wordle every day for more than two years 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 #1011, Tuesday 26 March: MAYOR
- Wordle #1010, Monday 25 March: SALLY
- Wordle #1009, Sunday 24 March: TOWEL
- Wordle #1008, Saturday 23 March: RISEN
- Wordle #1007, Friday 22 March: DECAY
- Wordle #1006, Thursday 21 March: SHADE
- Wordle #1005, Wednesday 20 March: LINGO
- Wordle #1004, Tuesday 19 March: ABIDE
- Wordle #1003, Monday 18 March: SPELT
- Wordle #1002, Sunday 17 March: SNORT
- Wordle #1001, Saturday 16 March: TOXIN
- Wordle #1000, Friday 15 March: ERUPT
- Wordle #999, Thursday 14 March: SINCE
- Wordle #998, Wednesday 13 March: LOCAL
- Wordle #997, Tuesday 12 March: HEAVE
- Wordle #996, Monday 11 March: PESKY
- Wordle #995, Sunday 10 March: GRASP
- Wordle #994, Saturday 9 March: CHEER
- Wordle #993, Friday 8 March: EARLY
- Wordle #992, Thursday 7 March: CLONE
- Wordle #991, Wednesday 6 March: TEARY
- Wordle #990, Tuesday 5 March: HUNCH
- Wordle #989, Monday 4 March: FLAME
- Wordle #988, Sunday 3 March: STATE
- Wordle #987, Saturday 2 March: URBAN
- Wordle #986, Friday 1 March: FORTY
- Wordle #985, Thursday 29 February: IMAGE
- Wordle #984, Wednesday 28 February: DEVIL
- Wordle #983, Tuesday 27 February: SENSE
- Wordle #982, Monday 26 February: OFTEN
- Wordle #981, Sunday 25 February: SMITH
- Wordle #980, Saturday 24 February: PIPER
- Wordle #979, Friday 23 February: APART
- Wordle #978, Thursday 22 February: HEAVY
- Wordle #977, Wednesday 21 February: BUILD
- Wordle #976, Tuesday 20 February: MATCH
- Wordle #975, Monday 19 February: PRICE
- Wordle #974, Sunday 18 February: RIDGE
- Wordle #973, Saturday 17 February: PSALM
- Wordle #972, Friday 16 February: STASH
- Wordle #971, Thursday 15 February: ASCOT
- Wordle #970, Wednesday 14 February: TALON
- Wordle #969, Tuesday 13 February: SCRAM
- Wordle #968, Monday 12 February: PASTA
- Wordle #967, Sunday 11 February: NEVER
- Wordle #966, Saturday 10 February: FRIED
- Wordle #965, Friday 9 February: STIFF
- Wordle #964, Thursday 8 February: PLACE
- Wordle #963, Wednesday 7 February: AFTER
- Wordle #962, Tuesday 6 February: WHICH
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 2024.
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 or the New York Times’ Crossword app (iOS / Android), 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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