Looking for a different day?
A new NYT Wordle puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing ‘today’s game’ while others are playing ‘yesterday’s’. If you’re looking for Tuesday’s puzzle instead then click here.
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? TechRadar’s Quordle today page contains hints and answers for that game, and you can also take a look at our NYT Strands today and NYT Connections today pages for our 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 #1453) – 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 #1453) – 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 #1453) – 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 #1453) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is D.
D is a fairly common letter to end a Wordle answer: it’s the eighth most likely to be in that position in a solution.
Wordle hints (game #1453) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1453.
- Today’s Wordle answer is a pattern.
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 #1453)
- NYT average score: 3.4
- My score: 4
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- My skill score: 93
- My luck score: 44
- My start word performance: CLOUT (83 remaining answers)
- WordleBot’s start word performance: CRANE (59)
- Tomorrow’s start word: ENEMY
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1453) is… PLAID.
I fully embraced the PLAID shirt trend of the 1990s, to the extent that by about 1996 I must have owned about 15 of them, which I rotated through the many gigs I went to at which plaid-shirted kids watched plaid-shirted bands play angsty grunge rock.
I can no longer fit into any of those shirts, sadly, but the word remains lodged in my consciousness and maybe that helped me to a four today.
Or it could just be that PLAID is a fairly easy Wordle, more so than yesterday’s TAFFY for sure. That game finished with a 4.5 average (down from 4.8 when I wrote my column), but today’s is only at 3.4. If it stays there, it will be one of the easiest we’ve had all year.
Why so simple? Well for starters, TRAIN left only six options. Though this word sits just outside the top 20 best Wordle start words, according to WordleBot, it is regularly one of the most popular choices, so that will have skewed the numbers. The fact that AUDIO left only eight will have had a bigger impact still, while ADIEU left 15 for good measure.
It won’t necessarily have been difficult even if you didn’t start with one of those words. The biggest complication is the fact that the PLAI- pattern has a few alternatives in the form of PLAIN and PLAIT, while if you dropped the P you’d also get the likes of FLAIL and CLAIM.
My game progressed without any yellows, which happens more often than you might think and which always leads to a nice clean board. These things please me.
CLOUT, my first guess, left 83 and gave me a green L, and my follow-up SNARE added an A and cut that to seven. I found only three of them, though: FLAIL, LLAMA and PLAID, missing PLAZA, FLAKY, PLAYA and GLAMP.
That impacted my next guess, because FLAIL would have correctly guaranteed me a four based on my shortlisted words, but in reality might have left me a three-way choice.
Fortunately, that didn’t happen; when the LAI pattern turned green in the middle, PLAID became the only possible answer so I scored a four anyway.
How did you do today? Send me an email or let me know in the comments.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1452)
In a different time zone where it’s still Tuesday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1452, 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 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.
- 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 Y.
Y is the second most common ending letter in the game, behind only E. In total, 364 Wordle answers end with a Y.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here’s an extra one for game #1452.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is a chewy candy.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1452)
- NYT average score: 4.5 (revised)
- My score: 5
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- My skill score: 92
- My luck score: 38
- My start word performance: DUMPY (221 remaining answers)
- WordleBot’s start word performance: CRANE (187)
- Tomorrow’s start word: CLOUT
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1452) was… TAFFY.
Was it only Monday that I was complaining that Wordle has been too easy lately? Well please accept my apologies for so obviously putting a jinx on yesterday’s game, because it is the exact opposite of too easy.
Indeed, TAFFY currently has an average score of 4.8, making it the toughest Wordle answer since EAGER nearly a month ago.
Its biggest complication is that double F in the middle – because not many answers have those; only 22 among the original 2,309 solutions, and more than half of those are found at the end of a word: STAFF and STIFF and SCOFF and FLUFF and BLUFF, for instance.
Too-many-answers is another factor: you could have played TACKY or TATTY and indeed I did in both cases. TABBY and TALLY and TASTY and TANGY and TAWNY all featured in many guesses today, too, as did FATTY.
But possibly the biggest problem for anyone not in the United States is that TAFFY is generally not a thing. Of course we have the candy in the UK, where I am – but we call it a sweet rather than a candy, and we call it a ‘chew’ or a ‘fruit chew’. In Australia, it’s usually a ‘toffee’.
That difference in naming convention may well have impacted the average score, because I’m writing this very early on in the day before most people in the US have even played. Maybe as the day goes on the average will come down. (Note – it did, to 4.5. So still very high but not quite as high as it initially was.)
But that said, it’s a difficult one anyway for the other reasons, so I suspect it will cause problems for plenty of people wherever they live.
I wasn’t helped much by my start word, DUMPY, although it did give me the Y at the end. I followed that with a sensible play for common letters, in the form of SNARL, but was unlucky and got only a yellow A.
Still, that cut my shortlist to 17, of which I found nine including the eventual answer: WACKY, FATTY, CATTY, TATTY, TACKY, TAFFY, BAGGY, CAGEY and ABBEY. I went with TACKY and finally made real progress, uncovering the T at the start and turning the A green too.
With hindsight, I should have played a proper narrowing-down word next; WordleBot suggested BATCH. If I’d have done that I’d have been guaranteed a four, but instead I still had three words to choose from. Worse still, they were TATTY, TAFFY and TABBY, and I hadn’t even found the third of those.
I went with TATTY thinking I had a 50/50 and when it was wrong realized my mistake and that I still had two to choose from. Faced with a real 50/50 I might now have ended up with a six, but I finally had a bit of luck when TAFFY proved to be correct. Still, a frustrating, annoying game.
Wordle answers: The past 50
I’ve been playing Wordle every day for more than three 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 #1452, Tuesday 10 June: TAFFY
- Wordle #1451, Monday 9 June: BOARD
- Wordle #1450, Sunday 8 June: LEASE
- Wordle #1449, Saturday 7 June: REUSE
- Wordle #1448, Friday 6 June: EDIFY
- Wordle #1447, Thursday 5 June: DATUM
- Wordle #1446, Wednesday 4 June: CEASE
- Wordle #1445, Tuesday 3 June: ADMIN
- Wordle #1444, Monday 2 June: PREEN
- Wordle #1443, Sunday 1 June: ROUGH
- Wordle #1442, Saturday 31 May: HABIT
- Wordle #1441, Friday 30 May: IDIOM
- Wordle #1440, Thursday 29 May: QUASH
- Wordle #1439, Wednesday 28 May: POLAR
- Wordle #1438, Tuesday 27 May: SPORT
- Wordle #1437, Monday 26 May: DRONE
- Wordle #1436, Sunday 25 May: GRIFT
- Wordle #1435, Saturday 24 May: SUEDE
- Wordle #1434, Friday 23 May: SHUCK
- Wordle #1433, Thursday 22 May: FOLIO
- Wordle #1432, Wednesday 21 May: ALARM
- Wordle #1431, Tuesday 20 May: BORNE
- Wordle #1430, Monday 19 May: PITCH
- Wordle #1429, Sunday 18 May: LIVID
- Wordle #1428, Saturday 17 May: GROWN
- Wordle #1427, Friday 16 May: FIFTH
- Wordle #1426, Thursday 15 May: EAGER
- Wordle #1425, Wednesday 14 May: BONGO
- Wordle #1424, Tuesday 13 May: AWARE
- Wordle #1423, Monday 12 May: BICEP
- Wordle #1422, Sunday 11 May: DOWEL
- Wordle #1421, Saturday 10 May: YEAST
- Wordle #1420, Friday 9 May: TRIPE
- Wordle #1419, Thursday 8 May: BALMY
- Wordle #1418, Wednesday 7 May: MACHO
- Wordle #1417, Tuesday 6 May: SUITE
- Wordle #1416, Monday 5 May: SHUSH
- Wordle #1415, Sunday 4 May: TROUT
- Wordle #1414, Saturday 3 May: PATSY
- Wordle #1413, Friday 2 May: WHOSE
- Wordle #1412, Thursday 1 May: ADEPT
- Wordle #1411, Wednesday 30 April: IDLER
- Wordle #1410, Tuesday 29 April: BLISS
- Wordle #1409, Monday 28 April: DUMMY
- Wordle #1408, Sunday 27 April: WEEDY
- Wordle #1407, Saturday 26 April: CLASH
- Wordle #1406, Friday 25 April: KNOWN
- Wordle #1405, Thursday 24 April: GENIE
- Wordle #1404, Wednesday 23 April: OZONE
- Wordle #1403, Tuesday 22 April: ARTSY
- Wordle #1402, Monday 21 April: SPATE
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 2025.
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’ Games 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.
12. The NYT has added in some of its own words, that weren’t in that list of 2,309 solutions. More will undoubtedly come over the next few years.
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