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 #1052) – 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 #1052) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is S.
S is the most common starting letter in the game, featuring in 365 of Wordle‘s 2,309 answers. In fact, it’s almost twice as likely to begin an answer as the next most common starting letter, C.
Wordle hints (game #1052) – 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 #1052) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is 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.
Wordle hints (game #1052) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1052.
- Today’s Wordle answer is a close cut.
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 #1052)
- NYT average score: 4.9
- My score: 5
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- Best start word performance*: SLATE, STARE, STALE (14 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: CREPE (197)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1052) is… SHAVE.
I’ve never scored three consecutive fives before, but there’s a first time for everything and today I achieved that unwanted record. In my defence, SHAVE is a very difficult Wordle; it currently has an average score of a mighty 4.9, making it the fifth hardest game so far in 2024, behind only JOLLY (5.4), PIPER (5.2), HUNCH (5.1) and ROVER (5.0).
The problem here is an obvious one: too-many-answers. SHA-E has seven possible solutions, in the form of SHARE, SHAPE, SHALE, SHAKE, SHADE, SHAME and SHAVE. Change the A, meanwhile, and you can also make SHOVE. This puts it on a par with -ATCH in the multiple-answer stakes, and just behind -OUND (eight) and -IGHT (nine).
How well you did will probably have depended in large part on your choice of the best Wordle start words. Those that have the S-A-E pattern – including SLATE, STARE and STALE – will have been among the big winners today, and all three of those words left only 14 possible solutions. Players who started with one of those will still have faced a challenge to narrow them down quickly, but each will at least have eliminated one of those seven SHA-E words, whether SHARE or SHALE.
Unfortunately, the missing consonant in either case is V – which, as I show in my analysis of every Wordle answer, is the least common of the seven consonants that could fit there. In order, R is the third most likely letter to appear in the game, followed by L, D, P, M, K and finally V, down in 22nd position in the rankings.
I would have been delighted with a mere 14 answers to whittle down, because my random opener was CREPE, and that left 197. So, not quite as bad as my first word yesterday (which left nearly 1,600 of them!), but still a lot to reckon with even without the difficult answer.
My second guess, SAINT, did well to narrow them down to only eight options, which were already fitting into that classic pattern: SHAME, SHAVE, SHAKE, SHAME and SHALE were all on it, together with SUAVE, SLAKE and SWALE. That’s according to WordleBot, at least; I didn’t consider the last of those.
I played it safe for my third guess, going with WHELM in order to rule out as many options as I could in one fell swoop. It was arguably the best option out there – though WordleBot preferred MOULD, that could have left a couple of 50/50s, either SHAKE/SHAVE or SHALE/SWALE. WHELM, meanwhile, could have left a three-way between SHADE, SHAKE and SHAVE, but I remembered that SHADE had been a past Wordle answer (in March this year), so I thought my choice worked well.
With a bit of luck, I might still have scored a 4/6 today. But once again I didn’t get it, because for my fourth guess I had that 50/50 between SHAKE and SHAVE. And of course, I went for the wrong one, playing the former when the latter was the real answer. And as a further annoying coda, it turns out SHAKE itself had been a previous answer, way back in February 2022 (game #273). Oh well – things will have to get better soon, right?
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1051)
In a different time zone where it’s still Sunday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1051, 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 D.
D is the ninth most common starting letter in the game, so maybe slightly less likely than you might expect.
- 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 L.
L is a really common letter to find at the end of a Wordle. There are 155 games that finish with an L, and it ranks as the fifth most likely letter there.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here’s an extra one for game #1051.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is a type of picture or design.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1051)
- NYT average score: 4.0
- My score: 5
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- Best start word performance*: PLACE (6 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: BOBBY (1590)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1051) was… DECAL.
It’s a long time since I scored two 5/6s in a row – you’d have to go back to LINER and THREW, games #934 and #935 in January. And as with yesterday’s VALUE, I’m going to blame bad luck for my performance, in addition to one rather silly mistake.
DECAL is not a really difficult Wordle puzzle; WordleBot says it has an average score of 4.0, which places it just below VALUE and only slightly higher than the overall average for the game, which is around 3.9. But as always, your chance of solving it in three guesses or fewer will have depended a lot on what your start word was.
I use a random opener these days, which has the advantage of keeping things fresh – but which can leave me with an uphill climb when things go wrong. And boy did they go wrong today. My random word generator served up BOBBY – which, it’s fair to say, would not have been a word I’d have chosen if I was still making my own decisions on this front, not least because it only contains three letters.
BOBBY left me with… wait for it… 1,590 possible solutions, which I think might be the highest number I’ve ever had. In contrast, CRANE – which is WordleBot’s favorite these days – left 13, while CRATE was at 12, LEAST at 14, SLICE at 10 and PLACE at six.
My chances of a high score were over at that point, and my chances of a par score were to disappear over the next two guesses. STARE was a perfectly good selection for my second attempt – it included five of the most common letters still left to play, and WordleBot said it was a “terrific choice”. But though it gave me two yellow letters, I still had 88 possible solutions – many more than a lot of people had after their first guess.
CLEAN was another “great choice”, and finally seemed to have pointed me towards the answer: C and L joined A in yellow territory, while E turned green. At this stage I examined the board properly and worked out that – success! – I only had one answer left. That was FECAL, and though I was a little unsure about playing it – would it really be an answer? – I couldn’t see an alternative.
The problem was that I’d followed my earlier bad luck with a bad bit of Wordling, because I’d missed DECAL. If I had spotted it I’d definitely have played it – but I didn’t. I therefore had to experience the horror of seeing that first letter stay gray, leaving me to finally solve today’s Wordle on the fifth guess, and slink away with my head firmly down.
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 #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
- 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
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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