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 Sunday’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 #1486) – 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 #1486) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is U.
U is not a particularly common starting letter in Wordle, with only 33 answers beginning with it. It ranks 20th in this regard, and is the least common vowel to start an answer.
Wordle hints (game #1486) – 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 #1486) – 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 #1486) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1486.
- Today’s Wordle answer is to have opened or made loose.
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 #1486)
- NYT average score: 4.0
- My score: 4
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- My skill score: 83
- My luck score: 47
- My start word performance: PASTE (375 remaining answers)
- WordleBot’s start word performance: CRANE (81)
- Tomorrow’s start word: CLANG
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1486) is… UNDID.
This was one of those games where the average score cannot be trusted to reflect the true difficulty – because it will have been skewed by ADIEU and AUDIO.
These two words are not among the actual best starters, but they are always the most popular, accounting today for 15% of all players. So, when those two perform well, it inevitably brings the average down below what it would otherwise have been.
Today, they made a huge impact: ADIEU left only eight words and AUDIO just one. That means that most of those AUDIO players (6% today) will have scored a two, and most of the ADIEU crowd a three.
The rest of us will have been looking at fours or fives here, which is no surprise given that UNDID contains a repeated D and is a past tense word, which most Wordles are not.
I scored a four myself, after a very lucky second guess of CRONY fixed a poor start given to me by PASTE. After the latter, I had 375 words; after the former, I had three.
Unfortunately, I only found two of the three, MINIM and FUNGI. Knowing that FUNGI had been a past Wordle answer, I played MINIM – and got it wrong. I realized my mistake on the next guess, and ended up with that four.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1485)
In a different time zone where it’s still Sunday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1485, 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 G.
G is the eighth most common starting letter, featuring in 115 Wordle answers. It’s often paired with an R to make GR— or an L to make GL—, but I’m not revealing whether that’s the case today.
- 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 E.
E is the most common letter to end a Wordle answer by far. That’s one of the reasons why many of the best start words, including SLATE, CRANE, CRATE and STARE, all end with one.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here’s an extra one for game #1485.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is a mythical being that guards treasure underground; also found in gardens.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1485)
- NYT average score: 3.7
- My score: 4
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- My skill score: 90
- My luck score: 40
- My start word performance: CRASH (626 remaining answers)
- WordleBot’s start word performance: CRANE (24)
- Tomorrow’s start word: PASTE
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1485) was… GNOME.
You might think that CRASH would make for a very good start word – and indeed, WordleBot rates it at 89 for skill, so it is pretty good in theory. But luck always plays a part in Wordle, and it left 626 possible answers.
WordleBot, in contrast, began with CRANE as it always does and had just 24 words to choose from. And that, in a nutshell, is why you should probably pick a good start word and stick with it if you want to maximize your daily score.
I could revert to a static starter, but I suspect this column would be less interesting if I did (and I don’t know that it’s particularly interesting as it is). So it’s a world of random openers for me, and that can lead to situations like this one.
The fact that I matched the ‘Bot’s score of four even so points the way to two conclusions. One, this is not a very difficult Wordle; its average score of 3.7 confirms that. And two, even the ‘Bot is subject to bad luck.
Or maybe it just played badly, who knows. I don’t think I had an amazingly good game, but I had a lot of luck with my third guess. And I needed it, because my second, POINT, was only marginally more fortunate than the first – and still left 19 answers.
I had only a yellow O and N at this stage, but could see that several of the options had the –O-N format – for instance BLOWN, FLOWN, KNOWN – and several finished —ON, including LEMON, MELON, VENOM and DEMON.
I went with the first of those formats in the end, playing BLOWN – and had a massive helping of good luck finally, when the O turned green but the N stayed yellow.
The N could now only go in two places, at the start or in the second slot, but at the start seemed impossible because it would need a vowel directly after it. I’d already ruled out A and I, and the O couldn’t go there either for an OO word, so I was looking at either NEO– or NUO–.
Neither of those formats yielded any words, so I looked at N in the second slot – where, presumably, it would need a vowel before it. But again, I couldn’t find anything that fit.
Finally, I considered the less obvious letters that can precede an N: K and G. After a few seconds of thought I decided the answer had to be GNOME, and it turned out I was right.
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 #1485, Sunday 13 July: GNOME
- Wordle #1484, Saturday 12 July: EXILE
- Wordle #1483, Friday 11 July: BRAND
- Wordle #1482, Thursday 10 July: JUMPY
- Wordle #1481, Wednesday 9 July: NOVEL
- Wordle #1480, Tuesday 8 July: DREAD
- Wordle #1479, Monday 7 July: STILT
- Wordle #1478, Sunday 6 July: ATRIA
- Wordle #1477, Saturday 5 July: BALER
- Wordle #1476, Friday 4 July: CURVE
- Wordle #1475, Thursday 3 July: POPPY
- Wordle #1474, Wednesday 2 July: INCUR
- Wordle #1473, Tuesday 1 July: MOLDY
- Wordle #1472, Monday 30 June: BLINK
- Wordle #1471, Sunday 29 June: WITTY
- Wordle #1470, Saturday 28 June: STUMP
- Wordle #1469, Friday 27 June: PLAIN
- Wordle #1468, Thursday 26 June: OFFER
- Wordle #1467, Wednesday 25 June: COMFY
- Wordle #1466, Tuesday 24 June: ELITE
- Wordle #1465, Monday 23 June: ODDLY
- Wordle #1464, Sunday 22 June: THRUM
- Wordle #1463, Saturday 21 June: GLADE
- Wordle #1462, Friday 20 June: TAUPE
- Wordle #1461, Thursday 19 June: CURIO
- Wordle #1460, Wednesday 18 June: MUNCH
- Wordle #1459, Tuesday 17 June: PRANK
- Wordle #1458, Monday 16 June: PETTY
- Wordle #1457, Sunday 15 June: QUAIL
- Wordle #1456, Saturday 14 June: GHOST
- Wordle #1455, Friday 13 June: BILGE
- Wordle #1454, Thursday 12 June: VIXEN
- Wordle #1453, Wednesday 11 June: PLAID
- 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
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 in 2022 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.
Services Marketplace – Listings, Bookings & Reviews