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.
Marc is TechRadar’s UK Editor in Chief and has been playing Wordle for more than two years. He’s authored dozens of articles on the game for TechRadar and its sister site Tom’s Guide, including a detailed analysis of the most common letters in every position. His Wordle streak has reached the 500 mark (and is now in the 700s) and he’ll be inconsolable if he loses it. Yes, he takes it all too seriously.
Wordle hints (game #991) – 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 #991) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is T.
T is one of the most common starting letters in the game, beginning 149 of Wordle‘s 2,309 answers. That gives it a ranking of fourth in the alphabet, behind only S, C and B.
Wordle hints (game #991) – 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 #991) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is Y.
Y is the second most common ending letter in the game, behind only E. In total, 364 Wordle answers end with a Y.
Wordle hints (game #991) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #991.
- Today’s Wordle answer feels like crying.
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 #991)
- NYT average score: 3.2
- My score: 3
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- Best start word performance*: TRACE and TRADE (1 remaining answer)
- My start word performance: TEDDY (4)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Today’s Wordle answer (game #991) is… TEARY.
If yesterday’s game (see below) was one of the hardest so far in 2024, then TEARY is one of the easiest. In fact, it represents one of the biggest swings we’ve ever seen, with 1.9 guesses difference between the two games. That’s not quite up there with the PARER (6.3) / CHUTE (3.5) swing in September 2022 (2.8 on that occasion), but it’s still enough to leave your head swimming with the unpredictability of it all.
There are two reasons for its easiness. Firstly, four of the five letters are very common overall, and the other one, Y, is very, very common at the end of a Wordle answer. And secondly, some of the best start words performed incredibly well today. TRACE and TRADE each only left one answer – and therefore a guaranteed 2/6 – while the likes of STARE and CRATE (2), SLATE (8) and CRANE (9) were all pretty special too.
Even my random word got in on the action. TEDDY didn’t look like a particularly lucky choice, given those repeated Ds, but the T, E and Y all turned green, and that meant I only had four words to pick from.
I came up with them easily enough: TEARY, TESTY, TEENY and TERRY, although I also jotted down TELLY and TECHY as possibles. Rather than guess one of them, I did what I usually do in this scenario and played a word which couldn’t be right but which would (hopefully) guarantee me a 3/6. It’s not the best option if you’re one of those people who craves the glamor of a 2/6, but it’s a lot safer – and I’m nothing if not a play-it-safe kind of person.
The word I chose was CLEAN – because if TECHY had been the answer (and Merriam-Webster dictionary says it is a word) then I needed the C in there. The L would have indicated TELLY. The E in the middle was for TEENY, the A for TEARY, the N for… well, nothing, actually. With hindsight I should have played CLEAR in order to indicate TERRY – without it, I could have faced a 50/50 between TERRY and TESTY on the next guess.
That was a mistake on my part, then, but it didn’t count against me, because the A turned yellow and I therefore knew it had to be TEARY. I played that next for a WordleBot-beating 3/6.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #990)
In a different time zone where it’s still Tuesday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #990, 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 H.
H is not a particularly common starting letter in Wordle: only 69 games begin with it, and it ranks in 15th place.
- 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 #990.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is an intuitive feeling.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #990)
- NYT average score: 5.1
- My score: 5
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- Best start word performance*: CRANE (18 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: FALSE (412)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #990) was… HUNCH.
Regrets, I’ve had a few… and I fully intend to mention them! For instance, I made a big mistake on today’s Wordle puzzle, and though I got away with it (for the most part), I’m still very annoyed with myself.
Admittedly, HUNCH is a tough one. It has an average score of 5.0 according to WordleBot, which makes it the most difficult since the truly horrible PIPER some 10 days ago. But more pertinently, it’s the second hardest so far in 2024, and indeed the second hardest since SASSY in November.
It has all the hallmarks of a difficult Wordle, too: the repeated letter, the fact that the repeated letter is not a particularly common one and (most of all) the fact that it’s an example of the too-many-answers variety. By that I mean that it is one where there are multiple words that have almost exactly the same spelling, differing only by one letter.
MATCH, a couple of weeks ago, was another good example of that – but it was slightly easier (4.3 average) because it didn’t also have a repeated letter. Here, you could have easily been distracted by the likes of PUNCH, LUNCH, MUNCH and BUNCH, so if you didn’t play sensibly you could have run out of guesses and lost your streak.
Those of you who started with CRANE may not have had such a hard time of it, because it left only 18 answers today. But many other popular start words were in the hundreds, and my random opener – FALSE – left 412.
From there, I could still have got home in four guesses if I’d chosen well on the next two guesses, but a combination of bad luck and a bad choice on my third attempt put paid to that.
My second wasn’t so bad: PRINT was a “terrific choice”, WordleBot said, but it was also unlucky and still left 14 possible answers. To make matters worse, I failed to identify all of them, somehow missing the BUNCH/MUNCH/HUNCH possibility.
It was an odd oversight, because I found most of the others: CONDO, BONGO, HUNKY, WONKY, KNOCK, KNOWN and UNBOX. I missed GUNKY and JUNKY (I think both are unlikely to be answers anyway), plus GONZO (ditto) and CONCH.
With the words I did have, FUNKY was not a terrible choice… except obviously it was, because it repeated the F, which had already been ruled out on the first guess. Doh! Even having missed the the BUNCH/HUNCH option, I should have played HUNKY rather than FUNKY, and that would almost certainly have pointed me to the winner. Instead, I played a word that inexplicably wasted a letter at a late stage. So stupid.
It didn’t actually harm my game too much, because FUNKY cut down my options to only three – but HUNKY would have given me a certain 4/6. Instead, I was left staring confusedly at the board for a few minutes, before realizing my mistake and identifying BUNCH, MUNCH and HUNCH.
So, what to do next? Well, I thought I remembered BUNCH as a past Wordle answer and though I was far from certain I decided that barring any better reason, I’d leave that until the end (NB: it had been an answer, game #838, in October 2023). So I played MUNCH next, and when that was wrong tried HUNCH and escaped with a 5/6 that I barely deserved.
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 #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
- Wordle #954, Monday 29 January: LEGGY
- Wordle #953, Sunday 28 January: EMBER
- Wordle #952, Saturday 27 January: SNAKE
- Wordle #951, Friday 26 January: ALOOF
- Wordle #950, Thursday 25 January: BLOCK
- Wordle #949, Wednesday 24 January: RELIC
- Wordle #948, Tuesday 23 January: STILL
- Wordle #947, Monday 22 January: TWEAK
- Wordle #946, Sunday 21 January: NORTH
- Wordle #945, Saturday 20 January: LARGE
- Wordle #944, Friday 19 January: THING
- Wordle #943, Thursday 18 January: STOLE
- Wordle #942, Wednesday 17 January: COURT
- Wordle #941, Tuesday 16 January: BLOND
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.
Services Marketplace – Listings, Bookings & Reviews