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 #1005) – 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 #1005) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is 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.
Wordle hints (game #1005) – 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 #1005) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is O.
O is a middling ending letter. It ranks 12th in this regard, and finishes 58 Wordle answers in total.
Wordle hints (game #1005) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1005.
- Today’s Wordle answer is a foreign language.
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 #1005)
- NYT average score: 4.2
- My score: 3
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- Best start word performance*: PLANE (11 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: SHUNT (256)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1005) is… LINGO.
If yesterday’s game provided a classic example from me of how not to play Wordle, I’ll offer up today’s as the antithesis.
WordleBot suggests most people are finding LINGO to be a fairly tough puzzle: it has an average score of 4.2, which makes it the most difficult game since HUNCH two weeks ago. However, I scored a 3/6 thanks to a very lucky second guess that cut down my options from 256 to one in one fell swoop. Nice!
I’m not surprised that LINGO is proving difficult, because though most of the letters are common, they’re not necessarily where you’d expect them. Take L: it’s the sixth most common letter in the game, but as I show in my analysis of every Wordle answer, it’s far less likely to appear at the start of a solution than it is elsewhere. Ditto O, which is a lot less common at the end of a word than it is in any of the three middle slots.
As a word, it’s not exactly obscure – but nor is it an everyday term, and it’s not the kind of word you’d necessarily spot when playing around with three or four of those letters.
Lots of Wordlers will have also been disappointed with their start word today, because very few of them were particularly helpful. CRANE, WordleBot’s favorite, left 81 possibles, while SLATE was at 106 and TRACE at 343.
My opener, SHUNT, was towards the upper end of that range, with the single yellow N that I uncovered leaving me with 256 options. But on the plus side, I knew what to play next – LONER has worked well for me in other games, so I dug it out again here with the hope of narrowing that list down to single figures.
It worked better than I could have expected, giving me a green L and yellow O, while turning the N green too. I knew a vowel would go between the L and N, and the only ones left were I and A, so finding LINGO was now not too hard. I played that next for a 3/6.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1004)
In a different time zone where it’s still Tuesday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1004, 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 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 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 #1004.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is to accept and endure.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1004)
- NYT average score: 3.6
- My score: 5
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- Best start word performance*: TRADE (5 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: DIODE (10)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1004) was… ABIDE.
Well, I completely messed this one up, didn’t I? ABIDE has an average score of only 3.6 – although more about that in a second – but I contrived to take five guesses, despite my random start word leaving only 10 options. Yes, that’s right – I had 10 choices and needed four guesses from that stage. Shameful.
I don’t have any excuses, either – it was simply poor play. And the frustrating thing is that ABIDE is very solvable if you don’t make stupid errors. It contains three vowels, which often make a Wordle easier, and none of the letters are particularly uncommon, although B is only really very likely at the start of an answer.
The reason why its average score is so low, though, is that two very popular start words cut down the options considerably. Neither is among WordleBot’s top 20 openers, but between them ADIEU and AUDIO accounted for 12% of all start words today. Given that the former left only two answers and the latter left five, lots of those players will have scored a 2/6 or 3/6 here.
I should have been in that territory too, because as I said above, DIODE left me with only 10. What’s more, I found most of them: PRIDE, CHIDE, SLIDE, GUIDE, GLIDE, SNIDE and ELIDE. The only ones I missed were ABIDE, BRIDE and ASIDE. Unfortunately, the first two of those in particular caused me massive problems later on.
I went with SLING on the second guess, because the four consonants featured heavily in my shortlisted words. WordleBot preferred SLURP, but still said that SLING was a wonderful choice. And it worked reasonably well, too, cutting those 10 options to four. The trouble was, two of them were ABIDE and BRIDE, which I still hadn’t spotted.
In my head, I now had a 50/50 between CHIDE and PRIDE – so I played the latter first as the more common word. That was wrong, but no matter, I’d score a 4/6 with CHIDE. But that was wrong too. I stared at the board in disbelief, then looked again at my letters and realized what my mistake was. ABIDE gave me a 5/6, but I was no mood to celebrate by now.
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 #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
- Wordle #961, Monday 5 February: REPEL
- Wordle #960, Sunday 4 February: VERGE
- Wordle #959, Saturday 3 February: MICRO
- Wordle #958, Friday 2 February: CLEFT
- Wordle #957, Thursday 1 February: ALIVE
- Wordle #956, Wednesday 31 January: BULKY
- Wordle #955, Tuesday 30 January: EXPEL
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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