Buckle up – because you're definitely going to need some Wordle clues and hints today! This is a REALLY difficult one that WordleBot says people are solving in an average of 5.3 guesses. Yes, an average of 5.3. Many streaks will be lost today.
I'm a Wordle addict who's been playing since December 2021, so I can definitely help you solve Wordle today and improve your game for tomorrow. Read on for my Wordle clues and hints to game #613 and bookmark this page so you can easily return tomorrow.
Oh, and if you also play Quordle then my Quordle today page contains clues and answers for that too.
SPOILER WARNING: Information about Wordle today and yesterday are below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.
Wordle clues (game #613) – hint #1 – Vowels
How many vowels does today’s Wordle have?
• Wordle today has two 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 clues (game #613) – hint #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is R.
R is a surprisingly uncommon starting letter. Despite ranking third overall in Wordle, it's merely the 11th most likely to begin an answer. However, it has started the past two Wordles.
Wordle clues (game #613) – hint #3 – repeated letters
Does today’s Wordle have any repeated letters?
• There are one repeated letter 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 clues (game #613) – hint #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is R.
R is a very common letter to end a Wordle answer – it's actually the 4th most common there, behind E, Y and T.
Wordle clues (game #613) – hint #5 – last chance
Still looking for Wordle clues today? Don't worry, I'll give you one more for game #613.
- Today’s Wordle is more ready than something else.
If you just want to know the answer at this stage you can scroll down to see it, 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 the solution then DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER BECAUSE THE ANSWER IS DIRECTLY BELOW. So don't say you weren't warned!
Wordle today (game #613) – the answer
The answer to today's Wordle, game #613, is… RIPER.
If you thought yesterday's Wordle (see below) was tough, then prepare yourself for the biggest test of the year so far. RIPER has an average score of 5.3, according to WordleBot, and by my reckoning it's the hardest one we've had in months. And if you play on Hard mode then wow, you are in for a white-knuckle ride.
It's so tough that it's difficult to know where to start. The repeated R doesn't help – this isn't that uncommon, but it still adds a layer of complication into the game. And the P in the middle is actually slightly less common than the two Rs – there are just 57 games that have that, compared to 60 that have a repeated R.
But really the big problem here is our old friend Too Many Answers. A look at Twitter makes that clear: scores of people are losing their streaks today, and most games have that familiar look…
Wordle 613 X/6⬛🟨⬛⬛🟨⬛🟩⬛🟩🟩⬛🟩⬛🟩🟩⬛🟩⬛🟩🟩⬛🟩⬛🟩🟩⬛🟩⬛🟩🟩all I can say is don’t try the 5 I did…February 21, 2023
Now this is bad luck. When strategy and luck collideWordle 613 X/6⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜🟩🟩⬜⬜⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩February 21, 2023
Outta luck today .😥Wordle 613 X/6⬜⬜🟨🟩⬜⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩February 21, 2023
In fact, the notable thing about RIPER is that it appears to have left people struggling to find both the first and third letter. That was what happened with my game: getting the ER at the end was easy, and finding the I wasn't too tough either, but after that? Well, it was a world of pain.
None of the best Wordle starting words helped at all today. SLATE, WordleBot's favorite, left 329 possible answers. CRANE resulted in 187. SLANT (530), TRACE (171), CARTE (163) and CRATE (171) were all useless too.
My choice – STARE, as always – left me with 181 and already facing an uphill struggle. With the R and E both yellow, I guessed that this would be an —ER word, but I had to make sure so played LONER to include another vowel and a couple of very common consonants.
That narrowed things down considerably; with those three new letters ruled out, and with E and R turning green, my possible solutions dropped to 44.
I didn't find them all, but I came up with a couple of dozen of them. They generally divided up into three categories: -I-ER (FIXER, BIKER, RIVER), -E-ER (FEWER, REFER, FEVER) and -U-ER (RUDER, PURER, BUYER). There were other formats – EIDER, UPPER, DRYER and so on – but essentially I needed to find out what that first vowel was, then narrow down the consonants.
DEVIL was my choice, despite the fact that I had already used an L; it was the only word I could think of that included an E in position #2, plus an I, a D, and a V, all of which featured in lots of my answers.
WordleBot liked it well enough, proclaiming it “a good guess,” and by confirming the I it moved my game on a lot – I was now down to 13 options. But with just three guesses left, I had a lot of work still to do.
I hadn't found all 13 of those possible solutions myself. Instead, I'd come up with just eight: WIPER, PIPER, RIPER, FIXER, MIXER, HIKER, BIKER and HIRER. The ones I'd missed were CRIER, ICIER, FIBER, BRIER and PIKER. And no, that last one does not seem like a valid answer…
My fourth guess was a vital one – I absolutely had to rule out as many consonants as possible. Finally, after searching for an age, I came up with BUMPH – and that did the trick nicely. Only the P turned yellow, but that ruled out all but three of my answers: PIPER, WIPER and RIPER. WordleBot also said I had PIKER, but I'm ignoring that.
So now I needed to find out whether it started with a P or contained a W. If neither was the case, then it would have to be RIPER. I played PROWL, and when the W turned gray but the P stayed yellow, I knew I had my answer: RIPER in 6/6 and a massive sigh of relief.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Wordle yesterday (game #612) – clues
In a different time zone where it's still Tuesday? Don't worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #612 too.
- Wordle yesterday had one vowel.
- The first letter in yesterday’s Wordle answer was R.
- There was one repeated letter in yesterday’s Wordle.
- The last letter in yesterday’s Wordle was Y.
- Yesterday’s Wordle is a healthy red color.
Wordle yesterday (game #612) – the answer
The answer to yesterday's Wordle, game #612, was… RUDDY.
We had one of the easiest Wordles in ages on Monday, with SWEAT being solved in an average of 3.5 guesses, but Tuesday's puzzle offered a sharp contrast. WordleBot says it took people 4.3 guesses to solve it, and I suspect some people failed it entirely.
In fact, I know they did – because WordleBot reported that only 94% of people solved it on the final guess. I don't know how many failed overall, but based on WordleBot's sample size it looks like it's in the hundreds, if not thousands.
There are obvious reasons why that would be. For one, it has a repeated D – something that only occurs in 22 Wordle games in total, or around 1% of the 2,309 answers. What's more, those two Ds are together – which only happens in 13 solutions. We've never had one before, either, so you won't have had past experience to draw on.
An R at the start is less common than you might think; although it's the third most common letter in the Wordle alphabet, it ranks just 11th as a starting letter. And U is the least common of the five standard vowels. Still, at least the Y at the end is very common.
Even if you found most of the letters, RUDDY is not an obvious word to guess. The Word and Phrase Info site ranks it at 17,432nd among English words, compared to just 3,724 for SWEAT.
And just to ram home how tricky it might be, only two of WordleBot's best Wordle starting words resulted in fewer than 100 remaining solutions after the first guess. These were TRACE and CRATE, and both left a still-quite-large pool of 77 possible answers. SLATE, WordleBot's favorite, had 308 and SLANT had a mammoth 530!
My own favorite, STARE, whittled things down to 123 possibles – so my second guess needed to do a lot of hard work. Well, it managed that – and then some.
ROUND took my options down from 123 to just one. Yes, one. It was an obvious word to pick: it uses a further two vowels, and adds two very common consonants in N and D into the mix. I wouldn't usually play R at the start – it's far more common in position #2 or at the end – but I decided it was a better bet than the likes of PROUD, GROIN, BROIL or CRIMP, all of which I considered, based on it including both the D and N.
With the U and D turning yellow, and the R going green, I knew I was in a good place. I suspected there'd be a few possible answers, but the harder I looked the more I starting believing that there really was just one. That was RUDDY, and it proved to be the answer. Just goes to show that your second guess really is almost as important as your first.
Oh, and as a further bonus WordleBot itself needed five guesses to complete this one. Excellent!
Wordle answers: The past 50
I've been playing Wordle every day for more than a year 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 #612, Tuesday 21 February: RUDDY
- Wordle #611, Monday 20 February: SWEAT
- Wordle #610, Sunday 19 February: KIOSK
- Wordle #609, Saturday 18 February: AVAIL
- Wordle #608, Friday 17 February: CACHE
- Wordle #607, Thursday 16 February: MAGIC
- Wordle #606, Wednesday 15 February: SALSA
- Wordle #605, Tuesday 14 February: SOUND
- Wordle #604, Monday 13 February: USAGE
- Wordle #603, Sunday 12 February: GIANT
- Wordle #602, Saturday 11 February: DEBUG
- Wordle #601, Friday 10 February: HEADY
- Wordle #600, Thursday 9 February: STAGE
- Wordle #599, Wednesday 8 February: FLAIL
- Wordle #598, Tuesday 7 February: APPLE
- Wordle #597, Monday 6 February: NINTH
- Wordle #596, Sunday 5 February: DANCE
- Wordle #595, Saturday 4 February: UNLIT
- Wordle #594, Friday 3 February: TASTY
- Wordle #593, Thursday 2 February: SHIRK
- Wordle #592, Wednesday 1 February: SCOLD
- Wordle #591, Tuesday 31 January: CROSS
- Wordle #590, Monday 30 January: CRAVE
- Wordle #589, Sunday 29 January: FISHY
- Wordle #588, Saturday 28 January: FLIRT
- Wordle #587, Friday 27 January: WORRY
- Wordle #586, Thursday 26 January: BEEFY
- Wordle #585, Wednesday 25 January: MAIZE
- Wordle #584, Tuesday 24 January: COUNT
- Wordle #583, Monday 23 January: ELUDE
- Wordle #582, Sunday 22 January: MATEY
- Wordle #581, Saturday 21 January: BLURB
- Wordle #580, Friday 20 January: ALTER
- Wordle #579, Thursday 19 January: MUCKY
- Wordle #578, Wednesday 18 January: CHARD
- Wordle #577, Tuesday 17 January: ADOPT
- Wordle #576, Monday 16 January: FROCK
- Wordle #575, Sunday 15 January: SPIRE
- Wordle #574, Saturday 14 January: KOALA
- Wordle #573, Friday 13 January: HUMAN
- Wordle #572, Thursday 12 January: LEAPT
- Wordle #571, Wednesday 11 January: SEDAN
- Wordle #570, Tuesday 10 January: GRIMY
- Wordle #569, Monday 9 January: PIXIE
- Wordle #568, Sunday 8 January: OPERA
- Wordle #567, Saturday 7 January: LEMON
- Wordle #566, Friday 6 January: BELIE
- Wordle #565, Thursday 5 January: SLEEK
- Wordle #564, Wednesday 4 January: LAYER
- Wordle #563, Tuesday 3 January: ANTIC
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 2023.
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.