OK, it’s Wordle time – you’ve just woken up and it’s the overwhelming feeling of the week ahead. Or you’re on the commute, powering up for another five days of important work. Either way, you’re ready for a spot of Wordle.
But disaster has struck. You’re on the fourth or fifth attempt, it’s not getting clearer, and your streak is about to break. Well, while we do have today’s Wordle answer for you, it’s not a foregone conclusion you have to use it.
Instead, we’ve got a hint to the solution for #254’s puzzle – if you use that, it doesn’t count as cheating, right? Who doesn’t want to feel good about themselves?
(And if you do want the Wordle answer for the February 28 puzzle, then you can just scroll straight down. No judgement, we’ve all got stuff to do).
Other Wordle tips
And we’re going further to help you, dear Wordle-r. Our gifted Wordle Pro, Lance Ulanoff, will be giving you his blow-by-blow diary later today when he gets online in New York – it’s his top priority.
Follow along with him as he gives you hints and tips on letter combinations and how to hit the high points in the shortest time possible – but even he doesn’t get it in two attempts that often…
Today’s Wordle hint from TechRadar
Right – today’s answer is a good fusion of nice letters to choose from, and too many options depending on how you began.
We began with an opening of THEME, worried that the double letter shenanigans of the recent VIVID and SKILL would come back to haunt us (also, using the same start word each time feels terrible).
Right, success. There’s an H in slot 2, and an E at the end. That H in particular is going to be useful – remember that H can only be paired with a small number of other letters, and those pairings don’t go well with all vowels.
It wasn’t SHINE, so we hit up on CH as the start… one of the most popular start words. And one we’ve seen as recently as yesterday with CHANT.
Right, does that help? No? Well, we’ve got one more thing for you to try…
Other ways to find Wordle’s 5 letter words
Instead of scrolling to the Wordle answer section below, why not try a 5 letter word generator? There are loads of great tools online that can help you learn a bit more about the world of Wordle and how to get the right letters first – how about you check one of those out?
One of our favorites is WordFinderX, which allows you to put in letters at the start and the end if you know them and, crucially: allows you to enter any letters that don’t fit.
Started to take advantage of the Words with Friends craze, this website has blatantly had a huge rise in traffic of late, but it really does do the job.
You can also try WordTips, which does the same thing but with a slightly kinder UI. We also like The Free Dictionary, but that only lets you use ‘contains’, ‘ends with’ or ‘starts with’ – as well as ‘unscramble’.
Right, now you can have the Wordle answer for today…
Today’s Wordle Answer #254 (Feb 28)
OK, fine. You want today’s Wordle answer, here it is: CHOKE.
We struggled with this one, blowing a whole guess on CHORE – it’s so frustrating when there’s only one letter to guess and you choose the wrong one.
Struggline with the definition of CHOKE? Well, like yesterday’s CHANT, it’s both a verb and a noun. As a verb, to choke, it can mean ‘making it difficult to breathe or inhale’ (Dave choked on his gobstopper) or ‘blocking the movement or growth of something’ (the blue weed choked the growth of natural plants in the forest).
As a noun, it can either be the part of a car’s engine designed to reduce the amount of air in the car’s fuel (and used to manual in the old days), as in Mum pulled the choke so hard it fell off, or it can mean a sound produced: Dave gave a choke of surprise when he realised it wasn’t a gobstopper).
How did you do yesterday?
RIght – you’re clearly good at Wordle, and today was just an anomaly. You don’t normally need the answer. It’s all fine.
To prove this to you, let’s hop back a couple of days, to puzzle #252, when the answer was SKILL. This clever Twitter bot shows us that this was a slightly easier answer, with most people doing it in four attempts or fewer.
Sadly, 2% of people failed. Streak over. Poor things.
#Wordle 252 2022-02-26248,363 results found on Twitter.10,087 hard mode players.1: 1%2: 🟩 5%3: 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 26%4: 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 34%5: 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 22%6: 🟩🟩 10%X: 🟩 2%#Wordle252February 27, 2022
What about if you fancy a little bit of something else? Check back daily to see our growing list of alternatives you should try.
Wordle Unlimited
Love a bit of Wordle but annoyed it only lasts one day? Well, why don’t you try Wordle Unlimited, the hugely unofficial game where you can play as many times as you like – and we’ve got all you need to know on how to use and play Wordle Unlimted ready for you.
Nerdle
Such a different game to Wordle, but it gives your brain a different workout. Consider Wordle your long, steady state run and then Nerdle being the HIIT workout you (inexplicably) do next.
You’re asked to enter a sum of 8 numbers or symbols long… and apart from knowing it has to have some numbers and an equals in there, that’s all you get.
It’s a great play – plus there’s an ‘Instant Nerdle’ that shows you one line of semi-correct entries in the wrong place… and it’s up to you to get it. Lovely.