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 #1081) – 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 #1081) – 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 #1081) – 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 #1081) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is M.
M is a middling ending letter: it ranks 13th in this regard, and only completes 42 Wordle answers overall.
Wordle hints (game #1081) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1081.
- Today’s Wordle answer is to clean and maintain an animal.
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 #1081)
- NYT average score: 4.4
- My score: 4
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- Best start word performance*: TRACE, CRATE (60 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: SALVE (446)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1081) is… GROOM.
If Superman is brought low by Kryptonite then my equivalent must be OO words. Yes, I also hate ER endings, but everyone dislikes those. OO appears to just be a mental block for me.
GROOM is the 22nd of these so far, and I have almost universally failed at them. I don’t have a score recorded for the first of them (STOOL, game #24), but I know that BOOBY, #54, was a 6/6 for me. WOOER, game #78 was my only failure out of the 1082 Wordles that have so far appeared. LOOPY (#89) and BOOZY (#130) were both 5/6s, as were BOOZE (#450), IGLOO (702), DROOP (#758 and BROOK (#779). There were also a bunch of fours: GLOOM (#352), FLOOD (#353), GOOSE (#357), ROOMY (#392), WHOOP (#443), FLOOR (#482), MOOSE (#620), BROOM (#691), KAZOO (#730) and TABOO (#1016). Only two – BOOST (game #197, 3/6) and ALOOF (game #951, 2/6) were below four. That has to be my worst run for any common letter format.
Unfortunately, as my analysis of every Wordle answers shows, there are plenty more to come: there are 81 games in which O appears twice, and of those 58 feature the two Os together. Which means there are still 36 more of them out there, waiting to trip me up…
GROOM is in line with the others, as I again scored a four for it. Today at least I had a sort of excuse, in that my starting word was very unlucky: SALVE drew a blank and left me with 446 possible answers. Not that many of the top choices were very fortunate; the best were TRACE and CRATE, which each left 60.
That poor start for many people will no doubt have contributed to the high average score here of 4.4; so yes, complain though I might I did beat the average still.
And really, I couldn’t have done much more today. My second guess was PRINT, which WordleBot said was a “terrific” choice and which cut my 446 possibles to 10. Pretty good. Most featured one or two Os: GROOM, BROOK (which I knew had been a past Wordle answer), CROOK, BROOD, BROOM, CROCK and FROCK, plus CRUMB, GRUFF and CROWD.
I decided to go for FROCK, because it would give me a good range of the letters that appeared in many of those words – the F and K were in a couple each, for instance, and the C was in four of them. It wasn’t guaranteed to give me the answer in four, though, and indeed it left me a three-way choice between GROOM, BROOM and BROOD.
This was not ideal, because I couldn’t recall either having been an answer before. But on the plus side, whichever one I played would rule out another one (or another two), so I was now guaranteed a 5/6 at worst. I decided to go for GROOM – which is also what WordleBot suggested – and got lucky. That proved to be the answer and I ended up with a decent result for my most hated of Wordle types.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1080)
In a different time zone where it’s still Monday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1080, too.
- Wordle yesterday had 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).
- The first letter in yesterday’s Wordle answer was 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.
- 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 K.
K is much more common at the end of a Wordle answer than at the start, and in fact ranks ninth overall in this regard.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here’s an extra one for game #1080.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is sharply delineated or barren.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1080)
- NYT average score: 3.7
- My score: 3
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- Best start word performance*: STARE (2 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: CAIRN (52)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1080) was… STARK.
It’s no great shock that this Wordle has a low average score of only 3.7, because anyone who’s been playing for a while will be well aware that there’s a certain popular start word that matches the first four letters of this answer.
Yes, STARE – which is the third most common starter, behind only ADIEU and AUDIO – left only a pair of possible answers today. Given that it was played by around 4% of all Wordlers, that will have had an impact.
How many of those people will have scored 2/6s? Well, the alternative was START, which is a more common word but which contains a repeated letter. The ‘bot reports that on the second guess, 7.8% of Wordlers played STARK versus 6.7% who went with START. So there will definitely be some twos today.
I had to settle for a three, but given that my random opener was CAIRN, which left 52 options, I’m happy enough with that.
The hard work was done entirely by my second guess, which was DEALT. Usually I play a second guess that contains the most common remaining letters, plus any yellows that I already have. Here, that would have meant going with LEAST or STEAL, and I did consider both. But if I had played STEAL I’d have learned nothing about the A, because it would be going in a place where it definitely couldn’t be. LEAST was a decent shout, and indeed it was WordleBot’s third choice here – but like me, the ‘bot ultimately preferred DEALT.
Why? Well, it’s all about the presence of the D. I already knew R would be in the fourth position, remember, so it made sense to look for letters that could follow it. T was one option – the answer could have been APART, START, SMART, HEART and a couple of others. E was also very likely – for the likes of STARE, SHARE, SPARE and AWARE.
DEALT contained both T and E, but it also contained a D – which featured in BEARD, HEARD, BOARD, GUARD, HOARD, AWARD and SHARD. I was hedging my bets here and hoping that one of those three would turn green and give me the ending combination.
As it turned out, I was heading in entirely the wrong direction, because neither D or E changed color at all. T did, but it was only yellow. So I needed another letter for the ending. But I didn’t have to look for long, because it soon became apparent to me that STARK was now the only possible solution. Bravo! I played it next for my welcome three to start the week.
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 #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
- 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
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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