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 #1404) – clue #1 – Vowels
How many vowels does today’s Wordle have?
• Wordle today has 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).
Wordle hints (game #1404) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is 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.
Wordle hints (game #1404) – 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 #1404) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is 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.
Wordle hints (game #1404) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1404.
- Today’s Wordle answer is a gas.
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 #1404)
- NYT average score: 4.3
- My score: 4
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- My start word performance: STUMP (1,038 remaining answers)
- WordleBot’s start word performance: CRANE (13)
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1404) is… OZONE.
This is one of the most interesting answers we’ve had in a while, from a structural point of view at least. It’s also an apt word, given that yesterday was Earth Day and we’re running our own Sustainability Week on TechRadar. Although I suppose it would have been even more apt yesterday.
Anyway, JEWEL (game #1,382) is the last Wordle to have both an uncommon letter and a repeated letter, although OZONE is arguably more complicated than that word for a couple of reasons.
For starters, that Z is in a really, really uncommon place. OZONE is one of only two out of the orginal 2,309 Wordle answers to have a -Z— format, with the other being AZURE, game #832 back in September 2023.
What’s more, the two Os sandwich the Z in a really unusual pattern. Now, repeated letters are not exactly uncommon in Wordle – around a third of all games have them.
Nor are repeated vowels themselves unlikely, with E, O and A three of the four most oft-repeated letters.
However, in many cases those letters go together, for instance the OO pattern in BOOST or the EE in CHEEK, or are split close to either end – for instance the many words that have an -E-ER pattern, such as SEVER and FEWER.
You don’t often get repeated vowels in positions #1 and #3, though. Among the original words list, only 18 As get repeated in this way, nine Es, seven Is and two Us. There was also a third U-U word – UVULA, which wasn’t in the original list but which appeared in game #1,244.
Even by those standards, an O-O pattern at the start is incredibly unusual – to the extent that we’ve never had one before and there is theoretically only one more to come. And no, I do not know what that future head-scratcher is.
It’s probably just as well that there are not more O-O words, because OZONE is a tricky Wordle in its own right. It has a current average score of 4.3, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that increases over the course of the day.
It will have been slightly easier if you began with CRANE, as WordleBot did, because that left only 13 possible answers. However, I did not; I began with STUMP, and that left 1,038 possible answers. Sucks to be me, right?
Still, my second guess – LONER – did the business, cutting those possibles down by more than 1,000 and leaving only eight choices.
I went with LONER because I am convinced there will be an ER word soon; it’s now been more than a month since the last one, TIMER, appeared. My hunch was wrong, of course, but it did give me three yellow letters and cut that shortlist to a manageable size.
I came up with three possible answers, OZONE, ANODE and OCEAN – but missed all of the E-starting words, namely ENVOY, ENJOY, ENDOW and EBONY, plus the less likely (but possible) OVINE.
That was not ideal, and WordleBot duly awarded me a dire skill rating of 60 when I played OCEAN, which seemed the best of my trio.
Fortunately, OCEAN ruled out those four E-led words, and ANODE, leaving me a 50/50 between OZONE and OVINE. I still hadn’t thought of the latter, so played the former and scored a respectable four, given my first guess.
How did you do today? Send me an email or let me know in the comments.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1403)
In a different time zone where it’s still Tuesday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1403, 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 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.
- 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 #1403.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is creatively minded.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1403)
- NYT average score: 3.4
- My score: 4
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- My start word performance: CURVY (40 remaining answers)
- WordleBot’s start word performance: CRANE (14)
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1403) was… ARTSY.
ARTSY has the lowest average since CREST more than a week ago, a 3.4 rating that marks it out as among the easiest games of the year so far. But I suspect there’ll be a fairly big split between the haves and have nots here.
It will hinge, as it so often does, on what your start word was. STARE, still one of the most popular choices, left only two possible solutions – I think the other was ASTIR, but I’m not certain. But better still was ARISE, the choice of 2% of Wordlers today; that left only the single correct answer.
I had rather more than that to work with, although CURVY was not a disastrous opener and gave me a green Y plus yellow R to work with.
That left 40 options – of which I found exactly 12: READY, REEDY, RAINY, ROWDY, RATTY, RALLY, ANGRY, RETRY, HAIRY, FAIRY, LEERY and BEERY. Although as it happens, BEERY was not on WordleBot’s shortlist and I do not know why. Surely it’s every bit as valid as ARTSY?
Anyway, I’d missed far too many words to have a realistic chance of solving it, and that showed in my second guess, RILED. This would have done a good job of narrowing down the words I had found, but it didn’t work so well on the words I hadn’t thought of – and left five choices.
As is often the way, though, I had no idea that the real shortlist was still longer than my own one. ANGRY was the only word left on my list – so I played that next, expecting it to solve the puzzle.
Obviously that didn’t happen, but fortunately it did rule out the other four words. So when I took another look at the board, ARTSY was the only option I could find, and happily for me it ended up being the solution.
It feels a bit like I solved this one by accident, then – but they all count…
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 #1403, Tuesday 22 April: ARTSY
- Wordle #1402, Monday 21 April: SPATE
- Wordle #1401, Sunday 20 April: PATCH
- Wordle #1400, Saturday 19 April: INBOX
- Wordle #1399, Friday 18 April: DIRGE
- Wordle #1398, Thursday 17 April: STOOD
- Wordle #1397, Wednesday 16 April: MORAL
- Wordle #1396, Tuesday 15 April: ASHEN
- Wordle #1395, Monday 14 April: CREST
- Wordle #1394, Sunday 13 April: LAUGH
- Wordle #1393, Saturday 12 April: NURSE
- Wordle #1392, Friday 11 April: ARROW
- Wordle #1391, Thursday 10 April: TURBO
- Wordle #1390, Wednesday 9 April: WHEAT
- Wordle #1389, Tuesday 8 April: SPARE
- Wordle #1388, Monday 7 April: HAZEL
- Wordle #1387, Sunday 6 April: VILLA
- Wordle #1386, Saturday 5 April: FOAMY
- Wordle #1385, Friday 4 April: KRILL
- Wordle #1384, Thursday 3 April: SHEAR
- Wordle #1383, Wednesday 2 April: CURSE
- Wordle #1382, Tuesday 1 April: JEWEL
- Wordle #1381, Monday 31 March: BOOTY
- Wordle #1380, Sunday 30 March: QUOTA
- Wordle #1379, Saturday 29 March: SORRY
- Wordle #1378, Friday 28 March: VERSE
- Wordle #1377, Thursday 27 March: SHEET
- Wordle #1376, Wednesday 26 March: ELBOW
- Wordle #1375, Tuesday 25 March: SHELF
- Wordle #1374, Monday 24 March: ANGLE
- Wordle #1373, Sunday 23 March: DOPEY
- Wordle #1372, Saturday 22 March: AMBLE
- Wordle #1371, Friday 21 March: NUDGE
- Wordle #1370, Thursday 20 March: BASTE
- Wordle #1369, Wednesday 19 March: SPARK
- Wordle #1368, Tuesday 18 March: TIMER
- Wordle #1367, Monday 17 March: LASSO
- Wordle #1366, Sunday 16 March: STAMP
- Wordle #1365, Saturday 15 March: LADLE
- Wordle #1364, Friday 14 March: PIECE
- Wordle #1363, Thursday 13 March: CHASE
- Wordle #1362, Wednesday 12 March: MANGO
- Wordle #1361, Tuesday 11 March: TRACK
- Wordle #1360, Monday 10 March: SPITE
- Wordle #1359, Sunday 9 March: GREED
- Wordle #1358, Saturday 8 March: NAVEL
- Wordle #1357, Friday 7 March: TROOP
- Wordle #1356, Thursday 6 March: ALERT
- Wordle #1355, Wednesday 5 March: SCRUM
- Wordle #1354, Tuesday 4 March: CHECK
- Wordle #1353, Monday 3 March: SPEAR
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.