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 #979) – 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 #979) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is A.
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 #979) – 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 #979) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is T.
T is a very common letter to end a Wordle answer – in fact only E and Y are more likely in that position.
Wordle hints (game #979) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #979.
- Today’s Wordle answer is separated.
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 #979)
Today’s Wordle answer (game #979) is… APART.
I’ve had a tough old time of it in Wordle this week – five 4/6s and one 5/6 dating back to last Saturday. But today, finally, I scored a 3/6.
Admittedly, I needed some luck to do it; but then again, that’s almost always the case. Wordle is a game of skill and luck, as proven by the fact that its own analysis tool, WordleBot, awards scores for each of those aspects.
Today, the ‘bot gave me 96/99 for skill and 63/99 for luck. That latter score may not sound that high, but my ratings over the previous six days were 53, 49, 36, 57, 34 and another 63. That’s not a good run in that regard.
If things went your way today then a 3/6 certainly won’t have been beyond you either, because APART is not a horribly difficult Wordle. It was eminently solvable if you began with TRACE, for instance, because that left only seven possible answers. The likes of CRATE (8), PLATE (6) and STARE (4) were other great choices among the best Wordle starting words, and all will have given you a very good chance of a 3/6, or even a 2/6 if luck did indeed swing your way.
However, that repeated letter A makes it harder than it would otherwise be, so there may well be some poorer results out there too. WordleBot says the overall average is 3.7, and given that some folk will have solved it in two or three, that implies there will also be lots of fours and fives.
I didn’t get lucky with my random start word, which was DRIER; this gave me only a yellow R, and left 164 words. Fortunately, my second guess was far more successful. I’ve had great results lately with ROAST, and here it cut those 164 options down to a trio: APART, CHART and QUART.
My memory for past Wordle answers is not great, but for whatever reason I recalled that the latter two had both appeared before: CHART in August 2023 (game #776) and QUART in August 2022 (#408). That therefore only left me one choice, giving me the 3/6 I’ve been craving all week.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #978)
In a different time zone where it’s still Thursday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #978, 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 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 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 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 #978.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is not light.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #978)
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #978) was… HEAVY.
I spend a fair bit of time writing about which letters are most common at the start and ends of a Wordle answer, and even which are the most frequently used combinations at both ends. By now you probably all know, for instance, that S is the most common starting letter (by a huge distance), followed by C and B. Likewise, E ends the most answers, with Y – today’s closing letter – in second place.
But what about the second and third letters? I had a hunch that the EA combo (as seen in HEAVY) is among the most frequently occurring in the game, so I did a quick bit of number crunching to find out. And I was right: it’s the fifth most likely combination in those two slots, with 42 instances across Wordle’s 2,309 original answers. Ahead of it are RA (66), RO (62), RI (58) and LA (49).
You may not find this interesting (the fact that I do is further evidence for my nerdiness, if it were needed), but it does help explain why HEAVY has a reasonably high average score of 4.0.
It’s all about probabilities. Looking at WordleBot’s analysis, lots of people failed on guesses #3 and #4 by playing the likes of BEACH, PEACH, HEARD, HEAVE, HEADY, BEADY, HEART, PEAKY, WEARY and others. Some include the H that starts HEAVY, some include the Y that ends it, but all have that EA pattern in the middle.
There are other factors at play, of course. H is not a particularly common opening letter – it’s only 15th in this position – and V is an uncommon letter in general, ranking 22nd out of 26. But I do think the EA format may have contributed to the problems, simply because many people will have had lots of options until the third or fourth guess.
Then again, it’s all relative. Several of the best Wordle starting words did cut down the options to single figures or close, so with some smart guesses those people will have had a good chance of a 3/6. CRATE and TRACE, for instance, left nine possible solutions, while SLATE was at 12 and STARE at 10.
Did anyone else start with KITTY today? Unlikely, but that’s what fate compelled me to play. KITTY helpfully gave me a green Y, but nothing else, and I still had 292 words left.
What to do? Well, I had a think about which letters commonly go before Y, and decided that including a D would be sensible. It always makes sense to include an E, ditto R. DRONE therefore seemed to make some sense – and WordleBot agreed, saying it was a “terrific choice”.
It didn’t seem to help much, though, giving me only a yellow E. WordleBot said afterwards that I now had 22 options, but I didn’t come up with anywhere near that many, instead finding about a dozen: ABBEY, ALLEY, SAMEY, BELLY, JELLY, LEAFY and MEALY were all on my list, as was HEAVY itself.
I decided to play LEACH next, and finally made real progress: that EA combination was confirmed, and the H also turned yellow. I now only had one possible solution, HEAVY, and played that next for a creditable 4/6.
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 #978, February 22 February: HEAVY
- Wordle #977, February 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
- Wordle #940, Monday 15 January: LUNCH
- Wordle #939, Sunday 14 January: DOING
- Wordle #938, Saturday 13 January: HEARD
- Wordle #937, Friday 12 January: ROUTE
- Wordle #936, Thursday 11 January: BRIEF
- Wordle #935, Wednesday 10 January: THREW
- Wordle #934, Tuesday 9 January: LINER
- Wordle #933, Monday 8 January: FINAL
- Wordle #932, Sunday 7 January: STONY
- Wordle #931, Saturday 6 January: CABLE
- Wordle #930, Friday 5 January: LUNGE
- Wordle #929, Thursday 4 January: SCANT
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.
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