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, and you can also take a look at my new NYT Strands today page for my verdict on the New York Times’ latest brainteaser.
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 #1,028) – 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 #1,028) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is W.
W is a fairly average letter when it comes to starting an answer. There are 82 solutions that begin with a W, with means that it ranks 13th – so right in the middle of the alphabet.
Wordle hints (game #1,028) – 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 #1,028) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is Y.
Y is the second most common ending letter in the game, behind only E. In total, 364 Wordle answers end with a Y.
Wordle hints (game #1,028) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1,028.
- Today’s Wordle answer keeps complaining.
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 #1,028)
- NYT average score: 4.1
- My score: 4
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- Best start word performance*: SAINT (35 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: WIDER (7)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1,028) is… WHINY.
It’s a case of fours all round today; four for me, four for WordleBot and an average score of 4.1 for the millions who have played so far.
It should have been a 3/6 for me really, though, because my random start word (WIDER) was incredibly helpful, cutting my options to only seven. Given that the best of WordleBot’s top 20 openers, SAINT, left 35, and that the most popular of them – SLATE and STARE – left 314 and 321 respectively, that was a real advantage. But, unfortunately, one that I squandered.
WHINY is quite a tricky Wordle. The W at the start is not massively common, the H straight after it not much better. OK, so as I show in my analysis of every Wordle answer, Y is the second most likely ending letter, but it’s still only a middling letter overall. Only two of the five letters here are in the top 10 overall.
It’s therefore no big surprise that it’s taken people four guesses (or more) to solve it. But the fact that I had to settle for that myself was disappointing.
Once that W turned green I knew I’d have a relatively small pool to choose from. I set about finding the options and came up with four of them: WHICH, WHIST, WHISK and WAIST. CHATS was designed to choose between them, and indeed would have done. But unfortunately, I’d missed three answers, WHIFF, WHIZZ and WHINY.
I looked again for my third guess, and this time found them all. FIZZY was my best option, because it would guarantee a solve in four, and when the Y turned green I knew it had to be WHINY.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1,027)
In a different time zone where it’s still Thursday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1,027, too.
- Wordle yesterday had vowels in three 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 L.
L is a surprisingly uncommon starting letter in Wordle. Despite being the sixth most common letter overall, it’s only ranked 12th at the beginning of a word.
- 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 E.
E is the most common letter to end a Wordle answer by far. That’s one of the reasons why many of the best start words, including SLATE, CRANE, CRATE and STARE, all end with one.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here’s an extra one for game #1,027.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is small parasite.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1,027)
- NYT average score: 3.8
- My score: 3
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- Best start word performance*: SLATE, LEAST (3 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: COUCH (33)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1,027) was… LOUSE.
I suspect this one will divide opinion. LOUSE has many of the hallmarks of an easy Wordle, including a (relatively) low average score of 3.8. But how straightforward you found it may well have depended on your choice of start word. A couple of popular options – SLATE and LEAST – left only three possible solutions, and therefore an almost-certain 3/6 with a chance of a 2/6. But some, including WordleBot’s favorite opener CRANE, left many more options.
And if you did have lots of words open to you, there is an obvious complication here, which I shall call the OUSE trap (yes, I am hilarious).
While not quite up there with -OUND or -UNCH, -OUSE has lots of solutions. HOUSE, DOUSE, MOUSE, ROUSE, SOUSE and LOUSE are the main ones, but many dictionaries also list TOUSE and BOUSE, though they aren’t words I was aware of before writing this.
So, if you ended the first guess with more than 100 solutions, and didn’t realize what kind of word it was until the fourth or fifth attempt, you might well have been in trouble today.
Alternatively, you may have sailed through it as I did – because the OUSE trap is the only remotely difficult thing about it. For instance, as I show in my analysis of every Wordle answer, all five letters are very common; U is the lowest of this quintet by frequency, but still ranks 11th overall. Plus, it has three vowels, which usually makes a game easier too.
My random start word had two of those three vowels, getting me off to a decent beginning that left me with 33 possible solutions. I swiftly did away with them for the second guess, giving up the (small) chance of a 2/6 in favor of including two more letters. But which ones? Well, I’d spotted the whole -OUSE thing already, so included an S and an E to guard against that. At this stage, I also knew that -OUND was a possibility, so included N and D. That left one more space, which I filled with the generally common letter L.
LENDS was incredibly lucky – it gave me all three remaining letters, including the L at the start. There was now only one possible answer, LOUSE, so I played that next and beat WordleBot at the same time.
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 #1027, Thursday 11 April: LOUSE
- Wordle #1026, Wednesday 10 April: BROTH
- Wordle #1025, Tuesday 9 April: MERGE
- Wordle #1024, Monday 8 April: BREED
- Wordle #1023, Sunday 7 April: VOILA
- Wordle #1022, Saturday 6 April: FINCH
- Wordle #1021, Friday 5 April: WRIST
- Wordle #1020, Thursday 4 April: CLIMB
- Wordle #1019, Wednesday 3 April: PLAIT
- Wordle #1018, Tuesday 2 April: SERUM
- Wordle #1017, Monday 1 April: FROND
- Wordle #1016, Sunday 31 March: TABOO
- Wordle #1015, Saturday 30 March: FORCE
- Wordle #1014, Friday 29 March: REALM
- Wordle #1013, Thursday 28 March: SPEAK
- Wordle #1012, Wednesday 27 March: STUNG
- 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
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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