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 #1162) – 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 #1162) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is F.
F is a very common starting letter in Wordle. It ranks seventh behind only S, C, B, T, P and A and overall there are 135 solutions that begin with this letter.
Wordle hints (game #1162) – 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 #1162) – 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 #1162) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1162.
- Today’s Wordle answer is a lace with a simple design on it – or an alternative spelling for a cut of meat/fish.
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 #1162)
- NYT average score: 3.9
- My score: 6
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- Best start word performance*: LEAST (8 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: CLASP (214)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1162) is… FILET.
Right, so I am thoroughly confused. In fact, I don’t think the NYT should have included this word at all – and I’m not just saying that because I scored a 6/6, my first for nearly a month.
FILET is, apparently, “a lace with a square mesh and geometric designs” according to Merriam-Webster, but I very much doubt that’s why it’s included here, because honestly who would know that?
Rather, I think it’s probably included as the alternative spelling of fillet, but that’s the French way, not English – and Wordle isn’t supposed to use ‘foreign’ words. You could argue that it’s in use in English, as in Filet-o-Fish and filet mignon, but the former is a proper noun and the latter part of a compound word; FILET doesn’t make sense on its own, in that context.
The other possibility is that this is a classic US English vs UK English thing, which wouldn’t be the first time that issue has reared its head. But if so, it’s a marginal one; I’ve checked multiple US dictionaries, including Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com and The American Heritage Dictionary, and all list FILET only as a less common variant of fillet. By that measure, I really don’t think it should be included as a Wordle answer.
I’ll be interested to see what others think, and will happily admit I’m wrong if the general consensus is that FILET is a perfectly fine answer. In which case, I’ll have to just accept that this was a disastrous game for me.
Without the confusion over the spelling I might have scored a four, definitely a five, but it wouldn’t have been a roaring success anyway. WordleBot says the average score is 3.9 at the time of writing, but I suspect that figure will go up considerably over the course of the day. But either way, I’d probably have missed par here.
My start word, picked at random, didn’t help. That was CLASP, theoretically a good opener but unlucky today and leaving 214 options. Second up, BROIL, was a “wonderful choice” said WordleBot – but incredibly unlucky and still left 36.
At this stage I had just yellow I and L to play with, but had at least ruled out lots of common letters. I figured an LY ending might be likely, so went with DIMLY and was again unlucky. This time I did turn the I green, but the L stayed stubbornly yellow and I still had eight words to pick from.
At this point I set about finding all of those possibles. I didn’t know there were eight, of course, and found only LITHE, LINEN, LIEGE and LIGHT, missing LIKEN, LIVEN, FILET and FILTH. Of the four I had, LITHE was a decent choice and would have guaranteed me a five if I hadn’t missed any – but of course I had. So rather than solve it, it added a T and E into the mix and confused me slightly.
Still, the L could only go in one place now, so effectively I only had to work with TILE- or -ILET. The D and R were ruled out, so it couldn’t be TILED or TILER – so it had to be the other format. But I couldn’t see any words that fit. Eventually I guessed GILET, which WordleBot didn’t think was an option but which I’d say is more valid than FILET. After all, it’s included in all the dictionaries I checked, and not as a variant!
But GILET wasn’t right, so with my final guess and staring at a possible first proper failure, I played FILET more in hope than expectation and was slightly surprised – but very pleased – to see it go green.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1161)
In a different time zone where it’s still Friday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1161, 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 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.
- There were 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 H.
H is a regular visitor to the final spot in a Wordle word. It occurs 137 times at the end of a Wordle answer, making it the sixth most common letter there.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here’s an extra one for game #1161.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is a blood-sucker.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1161)
- NYT average score: 3.9
- My score: 3
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- Best start word performance*: PLACE (2 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: SPARK (678)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1161) was… LEECH.
There’s something about leeches that have always fascinated me. I remember watching the 1986 movie Stand by Me when I was about 11 or 12 and being horrified by the scene in which the four protagonists are covered in the blood-suckers. Soon after, I went swimming with friends in a river near my house and on the way, tall tales were shared of how the river was filled with leeches. It took a lot to persuade me to go in! But of course there were no leeches, or none that attached themselves to us. I was almost disappointed at the anticlimax.
Anyway, I rather like them today, because LEECH gave me my first three all week. And it’s a good one, too; WordleBot says the word has an average score of 3.9, making it far tougher than yesterday’s BRUTE, albeit still at or below the average.
It has a repeated letter E, which is both the most common letter overall and the most likely to appear multiple times, as detailed in my analysis of every Wordle answer. Finding a repeated E is a lot easier than locating two Fs or two Ps or two Ms, let alone two Vs or Zs. It will have made the game a little tougher today, but not by much. And the other letters are all pretty common, H aside. That one only ranks 14th on its own, but forms half of the second most common ending combination with C, so it’s usually easy to uncover.
There were a few very good start word performances today, for instance TRACE (8 remaining words), LEAST (10) and PLACE (3), but most of the popular choices were either a little or a lot higher. CRANE left 21, SLATE left 98 and poor old STARE left 248.
I’d have been delighted with even that last result – because my random opener was SPARK, and that left 678. Remarkably, I reduced that to only three on the next guess, with CLONE proving to be incredibly lucky/inspired (delete according to how charitable you’re feeling).
My three options were LEECH, BELCH and EXCEL – and the good news is that any of those would have ruled out the two wrong answers. There was no reason to pick one over the others beyond which word was most likely, and I decided that BELCH in particular might not be an actual answer, so decided to skip that. EXCEL probably is – but I had a hunch it was a past Wordle answer, so went with LEECH.
My instinct was correct on both accounts: EXCEL appeared in December 2022, and LEECH was indeed the solution today. Hurrah!
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 #1161, Friday 23 August: LEECH
- Wordle #1160, Thursday 22 August: BRUTE
- Wordle #1159, Wednesday 21 August: MULCH
- Wordle #1158, Tuesday 20 August: DELAY
- Wordle #1157, Monday 19 August: METER
- Wordle #1156, Sunday 18 August: LANKY
- Wordle #1155, Saturday 17 August: STORM
- Wordle #1154, Friday 16 August: BRACE
- Wordle #1153, Thursday 15 August: ACORN
- Wordle #1152, Wednesday 14 August: SHORE
- Wordle #1151, Tuesday 13 August: NEIGH
- Wordle #1150, Monday 12 August: SKIFF
- Wordle #1149, Sunday 11 August: SCONE
- Wordle #1148, Saturday 10 August: MEDIC
- Wordle #1147, Friday 9 August: OUNCE
- Wordle #1146, Thursday 8 August: SAUCY
- Wordle #1145, Wednesday 7 August: MACAW
- Wordle #1144, Tuesday 6 August: ANVIL
- Wordle #1143, Monday 5 August: ENSUE
- Wordle #1142, Sunday 4 August: LOWER
- Wordle #1141, Saturday 3 August: SCALE
- Wordle #1140, Friday 2 August: FLAKE
- Wordle #1139, Thursday 1 August: CHALK
- Wordle #1138, Wednesday 31 July: PENNE
- Wordle #1137, Tuesday 30 July: FERAL
- Wordle #1136, Monday 29 July: SUPER
- Wordle #1135, Sunday 28 July: SMOCK
- Wordle #1134, Saturday 27 July: JUICE
- Wordle #1133, Friday 26 July: AWASH
- Wordle #1132, Thursday 25 July: PORCH
- Wordle #1131, Wednesday 24 July: FORTE
- Wordle #1130, Tuesday 23 July: PRONG
- Wordle #1129, Monday 22 July: CADET
- Wordle #1128, Sunday 21 July: SPECK
- Wordle #1127, Saturday 20 July: SHAFT
- Wordle #1126, Friday 19 July: REFER
- Wordle #1125, Thursday 18 July: NERDY
- Wordle #1124, Wednesday 17 July: QUITE
- Wordle #1123, Tuesday 16 July: DECOY
- Wordle #1122, Monday 15 July: SWOON
- Wordle #1121, Sunday 14 July: VIDEO
- Wordle #1120, Saturday 13 July: ENACT
- Wordle #1119, Friday 12 July: JIFFY
- Wordle #1118, Thursday 11 July: CAMEO
- Wordle #1117, Wednesday 10 July: GAUNT
- 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
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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