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 #1075) – 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 #1075) – 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 #1075) – clue #3 – repeated letters
Does today’s Wordle have any repeated letters?
• There are 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 #1075) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is 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.
Wordle hints (game #1075) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1075.
- Today’s Wordle answer relates to a pope.
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 #1075)
- NYT average score: 4.7
- My score: 5
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- Best start word performance*: PLATE, PLANE, PLACE (5 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: ROWER (663)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1075) is… PAPAL.
We’re in the middle of another one of those really tough Wordle periods. Or rather, we might be in the middle of one; it’s also quite possible that we’re at the end of one. Or maybe just the start, and this is the new normal for Wordle. What fun that would be!
Anyway, the fact is that today’s game has an average score of 4.7 at the time of writing, which places it among the most difficult games so far in 2024. And this is coming off the back of a 4.1 yesterday (MINUS), 4.2 on Monday (SKIER), and another 4.7 on Sunday (BEVEL). I suspect lots of Wordlers will have lost streaks over the past few days.
PAPAL is the most difficult of the four in my opinion. Sure, BEVEL also had a 4.7 average, but PAPAL is one of the rare Wordle games that contains two repeated letters. As my analysis of every Wordle answer shows, there are a mere 38 solutions among the original 2,309-strong list that contain two repeated letters, and given that one of them makes a game more difficult, it stands to reason that two would be worse still.
On the flip side of that is the fact that the letters in PAPAL are all common in their own right. A is the second most likely letter to appear overall, and is the fourth most likely to be repeated. P is less common: 15th overall, and 13th most likely to be repeated. However, it’s the fifth most likely letter to start an answer, as it does here, and appears in a few of the best Wordle start words.
Speaking of which – you’ll have wanted to begin with PLATE, PLACE or PLANE today, because they each cut the answers list to only five. PARSE, with 11, was also good. Everything else, less so. And then some! CRANE left 187, SLATE left 75, STARE left 191… it was tough going out there, hence the high average.
Still, it could have been worse – because you could have started with my random opener ROWER, which left… wait for it… 663. Oh dear.
That I got home from there in five was a good result, in my book. I played SLANT second, because those five letters included the four most common consonants remaining; I did consider adding in an O or I, but decided that finding the vowels would be easy enough later on and I was better off trying to hunt down the more numerous consonants.
SLANT worked pretty well, in that it gave me two yellows and cut my answers list to 27. But I still had work to do, and it was only after LACKY confirmed one of the two As that I made real progress.
That now left three answers, and I found them all: PAPAL, HALAL and VALID. All three would rule out one other answer even if it was itself incorrect, so I would be guaranteed a 5/6 at worst. VALID seemed the most likely, and had the advantage of including more letters – but ultimately I needed that fifth guess in order to uncover PAPAL. No shame in that today, though.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1074)
In a different time zone where it’s still Tuesday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1074, 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 M.
M is a middling letter when it comes to starting a word. It sits 10th in the rankings, with 107 occurrences in the 2,309 answers.
- 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 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 #1074.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is a negative quantity.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1074)
- NYT average score: 4.0
- My score: 4
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- Best start word performance*: SANER (2 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: SCOFF (204)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1074) was… MINUS.
WordleBot currently says MINUS has an average score of 4.1, but I suspect it may come down a little from there and settle at around 4.0 or even a little below that. After all, there’s only one minor complication to it: the fact that the S is at the end.
S is the eighth most common letter in the game, occurring 668 times among Wordle’s 2,309 original solutions. However, as my analysis of every Wordle answer shows, the overwhelming majority of those 668 appearances are at the start of an answer: 365 of them. What’s more, a further 171 are in position #4, where it tends to precede an H or T. At the end? Well, it only turns up there 36 times in total.
Other than that, the letters are reasonably common, although the fact that there’s no A, E, T, R, L or C is notable. That’s also the main reason why not many of the most popular start words made a huge difference today. The most successful of WordleBot’s top 20 was SANER – which was incredibly helpful, leaving only two answers. But SANER is not a particularly common opener, and neither are the likes of SAINT (which left six) or SNARE (seven). In contrast, people who started with STARE had 54 possible answers to sift through, while the SLATE crowd were left with 62.
My random opener was a lot worse than either of those, even. SCOFF gave me the S, but nothing more and left 204 possible solutions. Knowing what I do about where S is common, I immediately looked at options for ST or SH at the end and decided to play TRASH; this was sensible, I think, because if the H didn’t turn green, the T might turn yellow instead.
As it happened, the S wasn’t in that position, and neither H nor T changed color. I was still at a bit of a loss, then, although WordleBot told me afterwards that I had cut the options to 14.
I came up with a few of them at this stage: DUSKY, MUSKY and PESKY, MINUS and ISSUE, UNSEE and ENSUE. I decided to play an old trick I learned from WordleBot, and played ISSUE with its double-S, so as to confirm exactly where that letter went. In a way, it was wasteful because I was only playing four distinct letters rather than five, and so would potentially gain less info. But on the other hand, I would have two chances to see where the S went, and that was important at this stage to help me work out what the format was.
ISSUE was incredibly lucky. It didn’t technically turn either S green, but on the other hand it confirmed that it had to be at the end, so in that sense it did exactly what I wanted. It also gave me a green U, and a yellow I – and in doing so, it ruled out all answers other than MINUS. I played that next for a WordleBot-matching 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 #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
- Wordle #1064, Saturday 18 May: BRINY
- Wordle #1063, Friday 17 May: TUTOR
- Wordle #1062, Thursday 16 May: STALL
- Wordle #1061, Wednesday 15 May: PINCH
- 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
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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