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 #1,045) – 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 #1,045) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is C.
C is a very common starting letter in Wordle – in fact, it’s the second most common of all, behind only S.
Wordle hints (game #1,045) – 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 #1,045) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is T.
T is a very common letter to end a Wordle answer – in fact only E and Y are more likely in that position.
Wordle hints (game #1,045) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1,045.
- Today’s Wordle answer is an activity requiring skill.
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 #1,045)
- NYT average score: 3.9
- My score: 3
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- Best start word performance*: TRACE, CRATE (1 remaining answer)
- My start word performance: DEMON (511)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1,045) is… CRAFT.
You can never dismiss the role that luck plays in Wordle. However smart you are, however skillfully you play, you’re always at the mercy of the Wordle gods.
WordleBot, the NYT’s AI helper tool, makes this clear. The ‘bot awards each player a luck score as well as a skill score, and as you’d expect the average for the former is a lot lower than it is for the latter: luck has an average of 57 for the past 15 games, for instance, whereas skill is at 80.
This is one of the reasons why using one of the best Wordle start words is a wise move; it immediately increases the chance that you are ‘lucky’, because you’re skewing the odds by including the most common letters in the most common places.
When you use a random start word, as I do right now, luck becomes an even bigger factor – and today’s game might illustrate that more clearly than any other. My first guess, DEMON, was spectacularly unlucky, and WordleBot only awarded me a score of 8 (out of 99) for it. My second guess, however, was the complete opposite – and achieved a luck score of 82. The net result was that my game ended up with close to the standard luck score (58 in this case), but it could very easily have turned out differently.
You might need a bit of good fortune yourself for today’s NYT Wordle, because CRAFT is potentially tricky. WordleBot says it has an overall average of 3.9, which is pretty standard, but it will have been brought down by the (lucky) performance of a few popular start words. Among those, CRANE left a mere seven answers, STARE left 12, TRICE left three and CRATE/TRACE left only one.
For anyone who didn’t get good fortune at the start, it may well have been much harder. One of the main reasons for that is the F in the fourth position – as I show in my analysis of every Wordle answer, it’s only the 18th most likely letter to appear there. The other is the fact that quite a few other words have the same -RA-T format, for instance GRANT, GRAFT, DRAFT and TRACT.
As I said above, my game started poorly then got a lot better very quickly. My random opener was DEMON – which uncovered zero letters and left a whopping 511 possible solutions. Oh dear.
Fortunately, my second guess, TRAIL, cut that to three. Wow! There was no real genius behind it – I simply selected the five most common letters left in the game, then played them. But it was incredibly lucky, giving me two greens, one yellow, and a good chance of a 3/6.
The three words left to me were CRAFT, GRAFT and WRATH, so obviously I needed to play one of the first two. Not sure why? Well, playing WRATH could have left a 50/50 between the other two words, whereas going with CRAFT or GRAFT would guarantee a solve in four at worst, depending on whether the F turned green or not.
C is a more common letter than G, so I went with CRAFT and again got lucky; that word again. CRAFT was correct and I scored a 3/6.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1,044)
In a different time zone where it’s still Sunday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1,044, 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 P.
P is a very common first letter among Wordle answers. It’s the fifth most common in the alphabet and begins 141 solutions in total.
- 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 #1,044.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is a dried fruit or cutting action.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1,044)
- NYT average score: 3.5
- My score: 4
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- Best start word performance*: PLANE (4 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: LOWER (189)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1,044) was… PRUNE.
I don’t have a lot to say about today’s game, unfortunately. Not because I can’t be bothered (I’ll never pass up the opportunity to discuss Wordle), but because it’s a standard, straightforward game that doesn’t lend itself to lengthy analysis.
WordleBot says it has an average score of 3.5 – which makes it the easiest Wordle since LASER nearly a week ago – and I don’t see it causing many people any problems.
For starters, as I show in my analysis of every Wordle answer, four of the five letters are common, with P the only outlier; it’s 15th overall, whereas U is 11th and the others are in the top 10. What’s more, four of them appear here in their most common positions. U is the odd one out in that regard, but it’s only slightly less likely to appear in the middle of a word than it is in second position.
Another factor that will undoubtedly have contributed to the low average score is that several popular start words cut down the options nicely. CRANE, which is WordleBot’s preferred opener and which was played by 2% of Wordlers today, left only five answers, while TRAIN left 11 and – keeping the transport theme – PLANE left four.
My start word, as always these days, was a random choice: LOWER. That was a reasonably good word to play, but it was unlucky and left 189 options. I didn’t agonize for too long about my second guess, going with STARE because it added in three more common letters and moved the E to its most common place at the end of the word. Maybe I should have given it a little more thought, though, because I very nearly went with TRACE – and if I had done I’d have enjoyed a better result. That word would have cut the answers list to 13, whereas STARE was again unlucky and still left 28.
There was no real chance of a 3/6 now, and I needed a good third guess to escape with a 4/6. I attempted to come up with as many of those answers as I could, and identified that G, D, N and I were all found in many of them – so I played GRIND. Finally, my luck turned: it gave me two more green letters and left only one solution, PRUNE, which I played next for my 4/6.
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 #1044, Sunday 28 April: PRUNE
- Wordle #1043, Saturday 27 April: GLEAM
- Wordle #1042, Friday 26 April: VAPID
- Wordle #1041, Thursday 25 April: INTRO
- Wordle #1040, Wednesday 24 April: OVERT
- Wordle #1039, Tuesday 23 April: ROVER
- Wordle #1038, Monday 22 April: LASER
- Wordle #1037, Sunday 21 April: JOLLY
- Wordle #1036, Saturday 20 April: LUCID
- Wordle #1035, Friday 19 April: RAISE
- Wordle #1034, Thursday 18 April: FACET
- Wordle #1033, Wednesday 17 April: TITHE
- Wordle #1032, Tuesday 16 April: SHANK
- Wordle #1031, Monday 15 April: EQUIP
- Wordle #1030, Sunday 14 April: BLIMP
- Wordle #1029, Saturday 13 April: STEEL
- Wordle #1028, Friday 12 April: WHINY
- 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
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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