NYT Wordle today — answer and my hints for game #1502, Wednesday, July 30

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.

Your Wordle expert

Your Wordle expert

Marc McLaren

Wordle hints (game #1502) – clue #1 – Vowels

* 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 #1502) – clue #2 – first letter

A is a reasonably common starting letter in Wordle: 140 games begin with this letter. It ranks 6th among starting letters, behind S, C, B, T and P.

Wordle hints (game #1502) – clue #3 – repeated letters

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 #1502) – clue #4 – ending letter

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 #1502) – clue #5 – last chance

Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1502.

• Today’s Wordle answer is to analyze or judge the worth of.

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 #1502)

• NYT average score: 4.2
• My score: 4
• WordleBot’s score: 3
• My skill score: 99
• My luck score: 43
• My start word performance: GRILL (851 remaining answers)
• WordleBot’s start word performance: SLATE (20)
• Tomorrow’s start word: TUBER

Today’s Wordle answer (game #1502) is… ASSAY.

We’re in properly rare territory here, because ASSAY is one of only 38 Wordle answers that contains two repeated letters.

We’ve had 22 before it, and almost all have been difficult; of the 18 for which I have an average score, only one has dipped below the 4.0 level, and six have been at or above 4.5.

ASSAY is not quite that tough – its average currently sits at 4.2, which makes it difficult but far from impossible. That said, its score will have been brought down a little by the fact that SLATE left only 20 options and STARE left 23. Better still, ARISE – which is usually played by about 2% each day – cut the shortlist to only three words, and therefore gave people a fair shot at a two and an almost-certain three.

At the other end of the scale, my start word, GRILL, left 851 possible solutions. Not good. Still, at least I had three common letters ruled out, in the form of L, R and I, so assembled five of the remaining top 10 into the word SPACE for my second guess.

SPACE worked really well. Not only did it give me a yellow A, but it also gave me a yellow S – which was actually quite helpful, given that I could be fairly sure it wouldn’t be at the end of the word and therefore there were now only three likely places for it.

I figured that S might go before either an H or T to make one of the two most common ending combinations, so played HASTY in order to cover both possibilities. I was wrong on both counts – but the S turned green and the Y too, which finally gave the board some structure.

The A was still yellow, though, which meant it had to go either at the start or in the fourth position: A-S-Y or –SAY. Or, as it turned out once I looked at the options, it would go in both positions for ASSAY.

That was the only solution I found, although WordleBot later suggested it could also have been UNSAY. I didn’t think of that, though, so played ASSAY for a four that I’m pretty pleased with.

Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1501)

In a different time zone where it’s still Tuesday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1501, too.

• Wordle yesterday had vowels in three 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 O.

Vowels are generally less common than you’d expect at the start of a word, and O is only the 17th most likely letter to begin a Wordle answer.

• 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 A.

A is a relatively common ending letter. It ranks 10th in this regard and today’s game is one of 63 in which you’ll find an A there.

Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here’s an extra one for game #1501.

• Yesterday’s Wordle answer is a Greek letter.

Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1501)

• NYT average score: 4.0
• My score: 3
• WordleBot’s score: 4
• My skill score: 94
• My luck score: 62
• My start word performance: PRUDE (266 remaining answers)
• WordleBot’s start word performance: SLATE (140)
• Tomorrow’s start word: GRILL

Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1501) was… OMEGA.

This is one of those Wordles that isn’t that difficult in terms of its letters, but which you might well not have thought of as a word.

OMEGA is of course a letter of the Greek alphabet – don’t ask me to name them all, but other potential Wordles include SIGMA, THETA and KAPPA, while we’ve already had ALPHA, GAMMA and DELTA.

It has an average of 4.0, so not too hard – and considerably easier than Monday’s SAVVY, which remained at 4.8 throughout the day. But that said, 4.0 is still slightly above the global average for Wordle – which is at about 3.96 last time I checked – so it may well have caused problems for some.

Plus, that’s despite the fact that it contains three vowels, something that usually makes a Wordle word easier to uncover. Then again, the O, E and A are all in uncommon places here, which will have skewed the difficulty balance once again.

My game was smooth sailing, thanks to an incredibly lucky second guess following a fairly unhelpful first one.

My random word generator had given me PRUDE, which on many occasions would be a great opener; I played it with a certain amount of confidence that I’d turn over a few letters. Unfortunately, this time it gave me only a yellow E at the end of the word, and left me 266 options.

My instinct with a yellow E is always to play it in one of the final two positions; if it isn’t at the end, it usually goes in slot #4 before an R, to form one of those nasty ER words. However, here the R was already ruled out – so instead, I decided to place the E in the middle and play CLEAN.

This was a “wonderful choice” according to the ‘Bot, but more importantly it was very lucky – 91 out of 99 lucky – and cut the options to only two.

But what were they? Well, surprisingly, they were both Greek letters: OMEGA and THETA. I had no reason to pick one over the other, but went with the former purely because the latter had a repeated letter, and got lucky once again.

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 #1501, Tuesday 29 July: OMEGA
• Wordle #1500, Monday 28 July: SAVVY
• Wordle #1499, Sunday 27 July: WHOLE
• Wordle #1498, Saturday 26 July: HAUNT
• Wordle #1497, Friday 25 July: GOFER
• Wordle #1496, Thursday 24 July: QUAKE
• Wordle #1495, Wednesday 23 July: WATER
• Wordle #1494, Tuesday 22 July: BURNT
• Wordle #1493, Monday 21 July: TIZZY
• Wordle #1492, Sunday 20 July: BLANK
• Wordle #1491, Saturday 19 July: SWORD
• Wordle #1490, Friday 18 July: LORIS
• Wordle #1489, Thursday 17 July: MODAL
• Wordle #1488, Wednesday 16 July: NERVY
• Wordle #1487, Tuesday 15 July: FOIST
• Wordle #1486, Monday 14 July: UNDID
• 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

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.

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