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.
Wordle hints (game #972) – clue #1 – Vowels
How many vowels does today’s Wordle have?
• Wordle today has 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).
Wordle hints (game #972) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is S.
S is the most common starting letter in the game, featuring in 365 of Wordle's 2,309 answers. In fact, it's almost twice as likely to begin an answer as the next most common starting letter, C.
Wordle hints (game #972) – 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 #972) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is H.
H is a regular visitor to the final spot in a Wordle word. It occurs 137 times at the end of a Wordle answer, making it the sixth most common letter there.
Wordle hints (game #972) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here's an extra one for game #972.
- Today’s Wordle answer is a secret hoard, or the place you put it, or the act of putting it there.
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 #972)
Today's Wordle answer (game #972) is… STASH.
I've said it before and no doubt I'll say it again: I am hopeless at predicting which Wordles people will find difficult and which they won't. Maybe my brain is not like most people's. Anyway, WordleBot says people are really struggling with this one, because it has an average score of 4.5. That makes it the hardest since VERGE a couple of weeks ago (4.7), and worse than the likes of STIFF (4.3) and NEVER (4.2).
All of those words have something in common: a repeated letter. The letter in question here is the S, which is a lot less likely to appear multiple times than the E that was in VERGE and NEVER, with 49 instances among Wordle's 2,309 original answers. Maybe that's why this score is so high.
More likely it's the fact that STASH has a similar spelling to so many other words. If you look at the first three letters, you could have STAMP or STAIN or STAND or STACK or STARK or STARE or STALE or START or many others. If you didn't have those first three, but you had one or both of the last two, you might have had SMASH or SLASH or SWASH. Or, if you had a few yellows in there, maybe you got drawn in by TRASH or FLASH or SLOTH or SHUSH or so many others.
This, then, is one of those games where the best Wordle starting words might well have cut down the options nicely, but where you will still have needed several more guesses to solve it. TRACE left 25 and STARE 11, for instance, while CRATE was on 28 and SLATE on 15. All decent results. But narrowing down things from there may have been harder.
My start word was nowhere near as lucky: TABBY gave me a couple of yellows but left 136 possible answers. But my second guess fixed that in one fell swoop.
I decided to move the T to the end, because it's most common there, and to put the A in the middle (ditto). An S would go nicely between the two, so all I needed to do was choose a couple more common letters to start with. Adding L and E for LEAST did the job.
And boy did it do the job! LEAST gave me a couple of greens, but left the T yellow – which essentially meant it was green too, because it could now only go in position #2.
That meant I had -TAS- to solve. The only letters that can go before a T like that are S, or the vowels – and OTAS-, UTAS- and ITAS- didn't yield any words. So it was STAS-, which meant by a process of elimination it had to be STASH. I played that next for a WordleBot-beating 3/6.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #971)
In a different time zone where it's still Thursday? Don't worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #971, 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 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 T.
T is a very common letter to end a Wordle answer – in fact only E and Y are more likely in that position.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here's an extra one for game #971.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is a clothing accessory.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #971)
Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #971) was… ASCOT.
Ah, now this one might cause a few people some problems. Not because the letters are uncommon – on the contrary, they're five of the most likely to appear in an answer. And not because the best Wordle starting words didn't cut down the options, because they very much did. No, the issue here is the word itself, which I'm fairly certain is one of the most obscure to ever appear in the game.
Full disclosure: I've not taken the time to check every past Wordle answer, because there have been nearly 1,000 of them and I have other things to do, not least write this column. But I have run a spot check on what I consider to be the most uncommon solutions, using the excellent WordAndPhraseInfo as my guide. By that measure, ASCOT is the fifth most obscure word to be an answer, ranking 38,550th in the English language.
Above it, among the words I've checked at least, are KAZOO (41,037th), SCRAM (42,777th), BORAX (42,934th) and, drumroll please… REBUS (52,683rd).
Interestingly, SCRAM was the answer only a couple of days ago, and it escaped my notice that it was an obscure word; it's one that I've heard used plenty of times. ASCOT, on the other hand, is not a word I'd be aware of at all if it wasn't for the fact that it's appeared in Quordle at least once. Maybe I'm not well enough read, or maybe it's just that I have zero interest in fashion (apparently it's a type of scarf), but whatever the reason it's not a word I've ever used.
WordleBot's average score for ASCOT is, however, only 3.8 – which is presumably evidence that the obscurity of it as a word is balanced by the commonality of its letters. The latter point led to some very good starts, for instance TRACE left nine words, SLATE seven, LEAST three and ROAST only one.
My randomly chosen opener was also quite helpful today. I didn't think much of SHUCK when I first saw it – only one vowel when I prefer two, and it wasn't an A or E; an H, which is not particularly common; a K, which is downright uncommon.
Still, the S and C were very useful, not least because with H ruled out, there were only so many other letters either would pair with. The upshot of all that was that I only had 18 words left.
I didn't know there were exactly that many, but I could see it was in that ballpark and came up with about a dozen including COAST, CREST, CROSS, CRASS, COPSE, CLOSE, CLASS and CRISP. Based on those, a second guess of ROAST seemed sensible; it left out the C, admittedly, but at this stage I'd decided that was likely to be at the beginning anyway.
I has to rethink a bit after that guess, because the T turned green but the S stayed yellow. If the S wasn't at the start, and wasn't directly before the T, it had to be in either the second or third position in the word, and if it was second then the C had to be third – because no word starts CS.
So I played around with the permutations for a while – OSCAT, OCSAT, ACSOT, CASOT and so on – and was a little baffled until I spotted ASCOT and played it for my 3/6.
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 #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
- Wordle #928, Wednesday 3 January: TWIRL
- Wordle #927, Tuesday 2 January: AGING
- Wordle #926, Monday 1 January: MURAL
- Wordle #925, Sunday 31 December: SALTY
- Wordle #924, Saturday 30 December: THREE
- Wordle #923, Friday 29 December: CHILD
- Wordle #922, Thursday 28 December: LEARN
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.