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, and you can also take a look at my new NYT Strands today page for my verdict on the New York Times' latest brainteaser.
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 #1076) – 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 #1076) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is G.
G is the eighth most common starting letter, featuring in 115 Wordle answers. It's often paired with an L to make GL—, but I'm not revealing whether that's the case today.
Wordle hints (game #1076) – 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 #1076) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is Y.
Y is the second most common ending letter in the game, behind only E. In total, 364 Wordle answers end with a Y.
Wordle hints (game #1076) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here's an extra one for game #1076.
- Today’s Wordle answer is sticky (or a bear?)
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 #1076)
- NYT average score: 4.8
- My score: 5
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- Best start word performance*: SNARE, SANER (304 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: FATAL (938)
* From WordleBot's Top 20 start words
Today's Wordle answer (game #1076) is… GUMMY.
For those of you wondering whether Wordle could get any harder this week, well… yes, it has.
GUMMY currently has an average score of 4.8, according to WordleBot, following an eventual score of 4.6 for yesterday's PAPAL. I found it to be equally as difficult, with a second 5/6 in a row for me – which doesn't happen too often. Then again, given that my opening guess left 938 options, that's hardly surprising!
GUMMY is particularly tricky because there are six possible solutions to -UMMY: MUMMY, TUMMY, YUMMY, DUMMY, RUMMY and GUMMY itself. Add in the fact that it has a repeated M and you have a couple of major complications.
Of those six words, GUMMY is probably in the middle in terms of how likely people would be to play it. All are roughly equal in terms of how common they are as words, with the possible exception of RUMMY, which is a bit more obscure. But as my analysis of every Wordle answer shows, G is the least common of the starting letters, and therefore may have been less likely to have already turned yellow (or green) on the first few guesses.
That's how my game went at least. My disastrous opening word was FATAL, which would have been a superb starter yesterday for PAPAL but which today left not far off 1,000 solutions. Incredibly, none of WordleBot's top 20 openers reduced the possibles list to fewer than 300; most were between 300 and 350, so you can be sure that there won't have been many (any?) 2/6s here.
As with yesterday's game, I'd drawn a blank on my first guess then. But at least on my second attempt yesterday I'd picked up a couple of yellows. Today, I had to endure two blanks in a row: CRONE was “exactly what I would've picked” said WordleBot, but it didn't uncover a single letter.
I still had 61 options left for my third guess, but wasn't yet at a stage where I was drawing up a shortlist, as I could see there were dozens of ways I could play it. However, with T, L, R, N and E – five of the seven most common ending letters – already ruled out, I did know that I should include the other two, Y and H.
PUSHY seemed like a good bet, because it also added in S, which was the only top 10 letter I hadn't yet played other than I. I wanted to include the I, and nearly went with DISHY, but in the end decided to go with PUSHY – and that proved to be a wise (or rather lucky) choice.
PUSHY finally gave me a couple of green letters, and reduced my shortlist to 10 words. Or rather, it reduced WordleBot's list to 10; mine had nine on it, MUDDY, BUDDY, DUMMY, BUGGY, MUGGY, BUZZY, GUMMY, MUMMY and YUMMY. The one I missed? JUDGY.
What I needed now was a word that would narrow down those nine words in one guess, thereby guaranteeing me a 5/6. So I embarked on an exercise I learned from WordleBot – which involves coming up with a word that uses at least three of the consonants, then testing it against the shortlist to see if it would rule them all out (bar the answer). Here's how it looks (and this is a screenshot of my actual workings):
As you can see, I worked out that if I played MIDGE and the answer was YUMMY, I'd get a yellow M plus four grays. If the answer was DUMMY, I'd get a yellow M plus a yellow D. And so on, for each of the possible answers.
After checking all nine of the words I was convinced: MIDGE would guarantee a 5/6 unless I'd missed something. And I had, of course, but fortunately it didn't matter – the G and M in MIDGE both turned yellow, which meant the answer had to be GUMMY. I played it next with some relief.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1075)
In a different time zone where it's still Wednesday? Don't worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1075, 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 P.
P is a very common first letter among Wordle answers. It's the fifth most common in the alphabet and begins 141 solutions in total.
- There were 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 L.
L is a really common letter to find at the end of a Wordle. There are 155 games that finish with an L, and it ranks as the fifth most likely letter there.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here's an extra one for game #1075.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer relates to a pope.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1075)
- NYT average score: 4.6
- My score: 5
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- Best start word performance*: PLATE, PLANE, PLACE (5 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: ROWER (663)
* From WordleBot's Top 20 start words
Today's Wordle answer (game #1075) is… PAPAL.
We're in the middle of another one of those really tough Wordle periods. Or rather, we might be in the middle of one; it's also quite possible that we're at the end of one. Or maybe just the start, and this is the new normal for Wordle. What fun that would be!
Anyway, the fact is that today's game has an average score of 4.7 at the time of writing [it settled at 4.6], which places it among the most difficult games so far in 2024. And this is coming off the back of a 4.1 yesterday (MINUS), 4.2 on Monday (SKIER), and another 4.7 on Sunday (BEVEL). I suspect lots of Wordlers will have lost streaks over the past few days.
PAPAL is the most difficult of the four in my opinion. Sure, BEVEL also had a 4.7 average, but PAPAL is one of the rare Wordle games that contains two repeated letters. As my analysis of every Wordle answer shows, there are a mere 38 solutions among the original 2,309-strong list that contain two repeated letters, and given that one of them makes a game more difficult, it stands to reason that two would be worse still.
On the flip side of that is the fact that the letters in PAPAL are all common in their own right. A is the second most likely letter to appear overall, and is the fourth most likely to be repeated. P is less common: 15th overall, and 13th most likely to be repeated. However, it's the fifth most likely letter to start an answer, as it does here, and appears in a few of the best Wordle start words.
Speaking of which – you'll have wanted to begin with PLATE, PLACE or PLANE today, because they each cut the answers list to only five. PARSE, with 11, was also good. Everything else, less so. And then some! CRANE left 187, SLATE left 75, STARE left 191… it was tough going out there, hence the high average.
Still, it could have been worse – because you could have started with my random opener ROWER, which left… wait for it… 663. Oh dear.
That I got home from there in five was a good result, in my book. I played SLANT second, because those five letters included the four most common consonants remaining; I did consider adding in an O or I, but decided that finding the vowels would be easy enough later on and I was better off trying to hunt down the more numerous consonants.
SLANT worked pretty well, in that it gave me two yellows and cut my answers list to 27. But I still had work to do, and it was only after LACKY confirmed one of the two As that I made real progress.
That now left three answers, and I found them all: PAPAL, HALAL and VALID. All three would rule out one other answer even if it was itself incorrect, so I would be guaranteed a 5/6 at worst. VALID seemed the most likely, and had the advantage of including more letters – but ultimately I needed that fifth guess in order to uncover PAPAL. No shame in that today, though.
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 #1075, Wednesday 29 May: PAPAL
- Wordle #1074, Tuesday 28 May: MINUS
- Wordle #1073, Monday 27 May: SKIER
- Wordle #1072, Sunday 26 May: BEVEL
- Wordle #1071, Saturday 25 May: TITAN
- Wordle #1070, Friday 24 May: GLIDE
- Wordle #1069, Thursday 23 May: SWISH
- Wordle #1068, Wednesday 22 May: EXALT
- Wordle #1067, Tuesday 21 May: DINGO
- Wordle #1066, Monday 20 May: NICER
- Wordle #1065, Sunday 19 May: HITCH
- Wordle #1064, Saturday 18 May: BRINY
- Wordle #1063, Friday 17 May: TUTOR
- Wordle #1062, Thursday 16 May: STALL
- Wordle #1061, Wednesday 15 May: PINCH
- Wordle #1060, Tuesday 14 May: AMASS
- Wordle #1059, Monday 13 May: CUMIN
- Wordle #1058, Sunday 12 May: OUTER
- Wordle #1057, Saturday 11 May: TIDAL
- Wordle #1056, Friday 10 May: MEDIA
- Wordle #1055, Thursday 9 May: JERKY
- Wordle #1054, Wednesday 8 May: PIOUS
- Wordle #1053, Tuesday 7 May: MUSTY
- Wordle #1052, Monday 6 May: SHAVE
- Wordle #1051, Sunday 5 May: DECAL
- Wordle #1050, Saturday 4 May: VALUE
- Wordle #1049, Friday 3 May: EBONY
- Wordle #1048, Thursday 2 May: SLICE
- Wordle #1047, Wednesday 1 May: DIARY
- Wordle #1046, Tuesday 30 April: PROWL
- Wordle #1045, Monday 29 April: CRAFT
- Wordle #1044, Sunday 28 April: PRUNE
- Wordle #1043, Saturday 27 April: GLEAM
- Wordle #1042, Friday 26 April: VAPID
- Wordle #1041, Thursday 25 April: INTRO
- Wordle #1040, Wednesday 24 April: OVERT
- Wordle #1039, Tuesday 23 April: ROVER
- Wordle #1038, Monday 22 April: LASER
- Wordle #1037, Sunday 21 April: JOLLY
- Wordle #1036, Saturday 20 April: LUCID
- Wordle #1035, Friday 19 April: RAISE
- Wordle #1034, Thursday 18 April: FACET
- Wordle #1033, Wednesday 17 April: TITHE
- Wordle #1032, Tuesday 16 April: SHANK
- Wordle #1031, Monday 15 April: EQUIP
- Wordle #1030, Sunday 14 April: BLIMP
- Wordle #1029, Saturday 13 April: STEEL
- Wordle #1028, Friday 12 April: WHINY
- Wordle #1027, Thursday 11 April: LOUSE
- Wordle #1026, Wednesday 10 April: BROTH
- Wordle #1025, Tuesday 9 April: MERGE
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.