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 #1061) – 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 #1061) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is 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.
Wordle hints (game #1061) – 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 #1061) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is H.
H is a regular visitor to the final spot in a Wordle word. It occurs 137 times at the end of a Wordle answer, making it the sixth most common letter there.
Wordle hints (game #1061) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1061.
- Today’s Wordle answer is a squeezing motion.
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 #1061)
- NYT average score: 3.7
- My score: 3
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- Best start word performance*: TRICE (7 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: HOIST (13)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1061) is… PINCH.
In other circumstances I might have boasted today about how given a good start word I will invariably turn that into a 3/6. However, only a few days I was in a very similar situation, with 17 possible solutions after my first guess (13 today), and contrived to score a 5/6. So I won’t say anything about my score, beyond that I’ve got some work to do to get back on track after some awful recent games, and this is at least a start.
PINCH is unlikely to cause anyone too many problems. WordleBot says it has an average score of 3.7, and it has only one real complication. That’s the fact that several other words differ from it by only one letter: PITCH, PUNCH, WINCH, FINCH and CINCH.
That aside, there’s nothing much to worry about. As I show in my analysis of every Wordle answer, P is the fifth most common starting letter, while CH is the second most common ending combo. I and N are pretty common across the positions, and both are in the top 10 letters overall, as is C.
Starting words also made some impact here, particularly those that begin with a P (as you’d expect). PLACE left nine possible solutions, PLANE left eight, but top marks went to TRICE (7).
My starter, chosen at random, was HOIST – and that H proved very helpful. WordleBot told me afterwards that I now had only 13 answers to pick from, and the H was able to point me in the right direction for them. Plus, with S and T ruled out already, I knew CH was likely to feature, with possible supporting roles for WH or PH; they are about the only letters H regularly goes with.
What did I come up with? Well, PINCH, WINCH, CINCH and FINCH were all on it, but I dismissed the latter immediately as a past Wordle answer (game #1,022 in early April). I also had FILCH (but not ZILCH), NICHE and BIRCH. With CH at the start, I had CHAIR and CHAIN, and to mix things up a little I also found APHID. WordleBot also came up with KHAKI and UNHIP, as well as the aforementioned ZILCH.
I wanted a word that cut those options efficiently, and decided to play CLANG. I knew it couldn’t be right, but the C at the start would point the way to CHAIN, CHAIR or CINCH, the L to FILCH, the A to APHID, the N to NICHE and the three NCH words.
WordleBot liked it, though it preferred RIPEN. And rightly so – RIPEN would have left one answer, whereas CLANG left me with four: PINCH, WINCH, FINCH and NICHE. With FINCH ruled out, I really had a one-in-three chance, and for once managed to guess correctly. I played PINCH knowing that a 4/6 would be my worst-case scenario, but got lucky and scored a three.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1060)
In a different time zone where it’s still Tuesday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1060, 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 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.
- There were 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 S.
S is really not a common ending letter at all – mainly because Wordle generally doesn’t allow plurals. It’s the 15th most likely letter to appear at the end of an answer.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here’s an extra one for game #1060.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is to collect.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1060)
- NYT average score: 4.2
- My score: 4
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- Best start word performance*: SLATE, STALE (14 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: COVEY (478)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1060) was… AMASS.
Finally! Repeated letters are pretty common in Wordle, with 748 of the game’s 2,309 original solutions containing one (or more). However, we’ve just experienced an historic run of repeatless (if that’s not a word, it should be) Wordles.
The last game with a repeated letter, before today, was JOLLY on Sunday, 21 April – which means we had 20 Wordles in a row without one. That’s only happened once before, right at the start of this year as it happens, but that aside the longest run was 14 games, which occurred twice in late 2021.
We were clearly well overdue one, then; you’d expect to get a repeat about every three games. And so as if to make up for that deficit, of course we get two repeats in the same answer here.
That’s a lot less likely than a single repeat; as I show in my analysis of every Wordle answer, a mere 38 of the original solutions list contain two repeated letters, meaning you’d only expect an answer with that format about every 60 games. As it happens, we last had one for SENSE, game #984, so this was also a little overdue.
That’s the complication here, then – and almost certainly the reason why it has a reasonably high average score of 4.2, according to WordleBot. I managed to beat that average, just, with a 4/6 – thanks to a decent second guess and excellent third attempt.
It certainly wasn’t due to my opener, which today was COVEY, a word I’d never even heard of prior to this. COVEY gave me zero letters and left 478 possible solutions; a far cry from the 14 left for players of SLATE or STALE, or the seven for those who began with ARISE.
My second guess was TRAIL, chosen because it featured the five most common remaining letters. It’s an obvious strategy, but it works. Or it did today at any rate, cutting those 478 answers to 16. That was still too many for a 3/6 to be realistic, so instead I focused on spotting as many options as I could, then finding a word to narrow them down.
You might think that it would be hard to come up with a list of possible answers based on only one green A, but with nine letters ruled out by now, there weren’t actually too many permutations to worry about. Here’s how I approached the task.
First, I looked at the vowels. The only one remaining was U, so I tried placing it before the A and could only see QUASH; WordleBot also came up with QUAFF. Meanwhile, I couldn’t see any words at all that placed the U directly after the A (as in FRAUD), and nor could I find any that had one at the start or end of the word for U-A– or –A-U.
So, the chances are that the answer would include either four consonants, two either side of the A, or a repeated A.
In terms of the consonants, I needed letters that could go together in pairs before and/or after the A. Not too many can do that, particularly given that I’d already ruled out lots of the best pairing letters such as T (so it couldn’t be STA–), R (so it couldn’t be PRA–) and L (so it couldn’t be BLA–). The only ones I could think of featured an S at the start and/or the end: SWAMP, SWASH, SMASH, SWANK, SHANK, SPAWN, SPASM, SPANK.
That left the repeated A option, which gave me AWASH, ABASH and AMASS. So that’s 12 of the 16 possibles, with the others being the aforementioned QUAFF plus SNAFU (already an answer, though I didn’t spot it anyway), SWANG and GNASH.
This kind of approach takes a while, but once you do it regularly you learn the patterns to look for. For instance, relatively uncommon letters that pair together at the start or end, such as WH (for WHILE, WHOLE) or MB (for PLUMB, THUMB).
With that task completed, I needed a word that would rule out as many as possible in one go. SWAMP was perfect, because it contained four consonants that featured in lots of my answers. It wouldn’t guarantee a solve in four guesses, but it would get me close. WordleBot agreed, saying it was exactly what it would have chosen too, and it was also lucky: it ruled out 15 answers and left only one, AMASS. I played that 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 #1060, Tuesday 14 May: AMASS
- Wordle #1059, Monday 13 May: CUMIN
- Wordle #1058, Sunday 12 May: OUTER
- Wordle #1057, Saturday 11 May: TIDAL
- Wordle #1056, Friday 10 May: MEDIA
- Wordle #1055, Thursday 9 May: JERKY
- Wordle #1054, Wednesday 8 May: PIOUS
- Wordle #1053, Tuesday 7 May: MUSTY
- Wordle #1052, Monday 6 May: SHAVE
- Wordle #1051, Sunday 5 May: DECAL
- Wordle #1050, Saturday 4 May: VALUE
- Wordle #1049, Friday 3 May: EBONY
- Wordle #1048, Thursday 2 May: SLICE
- Wordle #1047, Wednesday 1 May: DIARY
- Wordle #1046, Tuesday 30 April: PROWL
- Wordle #1045, Monday 29 April: CRAFT
- 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
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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