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 NYT Strands today and NYT Connections today pages for my verdict on two of the New York Times’ other brainteasers.
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 #1117) – clue #1 – Vowels
How many vowels does today’s Wordle have?
• Wordle today has 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).
Wordle hints (game #1117) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is G.
G is the eighth most common starting letter, featuring in 115 Wordle answers. It’s often paired with an L to make GL—, but I’m not revealing whether that’s the case today.
Wordle hints (game #1117) – 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 #1117) – 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 #1117) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1117.
- Today’s Wordle answer is painfully thin.
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 #1117)
- NYT average score: 4.4
- My score: 6
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- Best start word performance*: SAINT (6 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: FRITZ (282)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1117) is… GAUNT.
Well, this was a disaster! It’s not often that I score a 6/6 on Wordle; I had one for DOLLY in late June and before that one in early May for MUSTY. But I feel like today’s really should have been a five at worst. WordleBot scored a three, annoyingly, and the average score is currently 4.4, so a six is well over par.
I would say that I have only myself to blame, but luck played its part too, particularly on the first few guesses.
But before I get to that, let’s look at why it might have a high average score. The multiple answers issue that plagued yesterday’s BLARE might be one factor: HAUNT, TAUNT, DAUNT, JAUNT and VAUNT all differ by only the first letter, while GRANT has only a different second. The likes of PAINT, FAULT and FAINT were also played by lots of Wordlers on the second and third guesses.
Start word performance might also have caused some problems; CRANE left 23 solutions, which isn’t too shabby, but SLATE (64) and STARE (88) were not exactly sparkling. On the plus side, all five letters are common either in general (A, U, N, T) or in their specific position (G, which ranks eighth at the start of an answer), which will have helped a little.
With an average of 4.4, my guess is that the majority of people solved it in four or five, and I’d have been (relatively) happy with either today. But things started poorly and got worse.
FRITZ was a “decent” and “distinctive” opening guess, said WordleBot, but also unlucky: it only gave me a yellow T, and left 282 possible solutions. That earned me a luck score of 45/99, but my second guess (the rather obvious STALE) was only rated at 5 out of 99! Yes, it added a yellow A into the mix, but it left the T yellow too and only cut my shortlist to 31 options.
I hadn’t yet set about listing any of them, but did so at this point. I decided to go with TODAY, but WordleBot said it was “not my favorite” and again it was unlucky (21/99 this time). I still had only two yellows, and was starting to panic.
Fortunately, there were now not too many ways those two yellows could be arranged: A-T–, -AT–, –T-A, A—T or -A–T. Five formats to play with, 13 words to find. I only knew that for sure afterwards, but came up with many of those myself: PATCH, BATCH, MATCH, WATCH, HATCH, CATCH, GAUNT, JAUNT, HAUNT, VAUNT. Yes, I’d managed to completely miss two of Wordle’s worst missing-letter formats. What an idiot!
I will admit that I feared a fail at this stage. I had three guesses left, and lots of work to do to narrow down the options. So I gave up on trying to solve it, and played safe: CHUMP would guarantee that I couldn’t have more than three words left afterwards (and it might only be one).
Finally, I made some progress. The U turned green, which meant I was definitely looking at the -AUNT format. It had to be one of VAUNT, GAUNT or JAUNT now, so I played GIVEN in order to find out which one, and when the G turned green I knew which of the three it was. I played it with no little relief on the final guess. Phew!
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1116)
In a different time zone where it’s still Tuesday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1116, 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 B.
B is a very, very common starting letter in Wordle. In fact, it’s the third most common overall, behind only S and C.
- 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 #1116.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is a deafening sound.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1116)
- NYT average score: 4.3 (revised)
- My score: 3
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- Best start word performance*: STARE, SNARE (4 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: BRICK (29)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1116) was… BLARE.
What do FLARE, GLARE, BLAME, BLADE and BLAZE have in common? They all differ from today’s Wordle answer by just one letter, of course. SHARE, SPARE, STARE, PLANE, PLACE,PLATE and about a couple of dozen more? They differ by two.
Yes, this is one of those games where there really may have been too many answers to factor in, and that probably explains why it currently has a high average score of 4.4 [note: revised to 4.4]. It’s not the letters themselves, at any rate; as my analysis of every Wordle answer shows, L, A, R and E are all in the top 10 by frequency, while B is the third most likely to start an answer.
No, the problem here is simply how tricky it can be to narrow down that many options, particularly when the actual solution is one of the least commonly used of them. Not that BLARE is an obscure word, as such, but FLARE, GLARE, BLAME, BLADE and BLAZE are all used more frequently. Just to confirm my instinct on that front, I checked the WordAndPhraseInfo website, which ranks words by how often they’re used in English, and yes, BLARE is the lowest of those six.
You will, however, have had an easy time of it if you picked the right start word. STARE was the equal best of them, in terms of WordleBot’s top 20, and left only four solutions. CRANE and CRATE were at seven. So there were good options out there.
I didn’t have the luxury of choosing my starter, because I pick a random word each day – or rather, I use a random word generator to do that task. And today it gave me BRICK, which was an excellent opener than gave me a green B and yellow R.
That cut my shortlist to 29, and I needed only one more guess to further slash that number to one, meaning I scored a three. The annoying thing was that it could have been a two. I figured that the R would probably go in position #4 and would be followed by an E. A was a good contender to go before that R. And L is a good letter to follow B. So that would give me BLARE…
I was all set to play it, then decided that I might as well gain info about another letter by leaving out the already-green B, so went with GLARE instead. And of course the final four letters turned green, meaning I’d just thrown away a two. Still, a three is always welcome, and WordleBot only scored a four, so I’ll take it today.
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 #1116, Tuesday 9 July: BLARE
- Wordle #1115, Monday 8 July: SHAPE
- Wordle #1114, Sunday 7 July: CANON
- Wordle #1113, Saturday 6 July: SCOFF
- Wordle #1112, Friday 5 July: CRUSH
- Wordle #1111, Thursday 4 July: DEBUT
- Wordle #1110, Wednesday 3 July: THIGH
- Wordle #1109, Tuesday 2 July: INLAY
- Wordle #1108, Monday 1 July: ADAGE
- Wordle #1107, Sunday 30 June: BUDDY
- Wordle #1106, Saturday 29 June: ZEBRA
- Wordle #1105, Friday 28 June: DROVE
- Wordle #1104, Thursday 27 June: ORDER
- Wordle #1103, Wednesday 26 June: KNEAD
- Wordle #1102, Tuesday 25 June: SAVOR
- Wordle #1101, Monday 24 June: DOLLY
- Wordle #1100, Sunday 23 June: BUGLE
- Wordle #1099, Saturday 22 June: EDICT
- Wordle #1098, Friday 21 June: PAINT
- Wordle #1097, Thursday 20 June: SCENT
- Wordle #1096, Wednesday 19 June: TERSE
- Wordle #1095, Tuesday 18 June: COVER
- Wordle #1094, Monday 17 June: PRIOR
- Wordle #1093, Sunday 16 June: GRIND
- Wordle #1092, Saturday 15 June: PROUD
- Wordle #1091, Friday 14 June: VAULT
- Wordle #1090, Thursday 13 June: ANGST
- Wordle #1089, Wednesday 12 June: DETER
- Wordle #1088, Tuesday 11 June: SWUNG
- Wordle #1087, Monday 10 June: MANGA
- Wordle #1086, Sunday 9 June: CROWD
- Wordle #1085, Saturday 8 June: HENCE
- Wordle #1084, Friday 7 June: MELON
- Wordle #1083, Thursday 6 June: ETHER
- Wordle #1082, Wednesday 5 June: ORGAN
- Wordle #1081, Tuesday 4 June: GROOM
- Wordle #1080, Monday 3 June: STARK
- Wordle #1079, Sunday 2 June: BRAVO
- Wordle #1078, Saturday 1 June: BASIN
- Wordle #1077, Friday 31 May: CHAOS
- Wordle #1076, Thursday 30 May: GUMMY
- Wordle #1075, Wednesday 29 May: PAPAL
- Wordle #1074, Tuesday 28 May: MINUS
- Wordle #1073, Monday 27 May: SKIER
- Wordle #1072, Sunday 26 May: BEVEL
- Wordle #1071, Saturday 25 May: TITAN
- Wordle #1070, Friday 24 May: GLIDE
- Wordle #1069, Thursday 23 May: SWISH
- Wordle #1068, Wednesday 22 May: EXALT
- Wordle #1067, Tuesday 21 May: DINGO
- Wordle #1066, Monday 20 May: NICER
- Wordle #1065, Sunday 19 May: HITCH
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.
Services Marketplace – Listings, Bookings & Reviews