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 NYT Strands today and NYT Connections today pages for my 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 #1205) – 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 #1205) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is L.
L is a surprisingly uncommon starting letter in Wordle. Despite being the sixth most common letter overall, it’s only ranked 12th at the beginning of a word.
Wordle hints (game #1205) – clue #3 – repeated letters
Does today’s Wordle have any repeated letters?
• There are no 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 #1205) – clue #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 hints (game #1205) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1205.
- Today’s Wordle answer is a drink.
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 #1205)
- NYT average score: 4.7
- My score: 3
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- Best start word performance*: LEAST, LEANT (14 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: ECLAT (63)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1205) is… LAGER.
As I’ve said many times, ER words are very common in Wordle. There are 141 of them, which means you’d expect to get one every 16 games or so. And indeed, they do usually crop up every couple of weeks. It’s very rare to get two in a row, though; it happened in April this year, with LASER and ROVER, in July 2023 with COWER and ENTER, in November 2021 with FINER and SURER, and that’s it.
To that list you can now add another entry, with today’s LAGER following yesterday’s MINER. What’s more, at the time of writing this one is even harder than the previous example – WordleBot says it has an average score of 4.7, against 4.2 for MINER.
That extra difficulty may be down to nothing more than the fact that L and G are less common in their respective positions than M and N; as my analysis of every Wordle answer shows, L appears 87 times at the start of a word, but M is at 107, while N (137) is way ahead of G (67) in the middle. Or it could be that lots of people guessed LATER, LAYER, LASER, PAGER and WAGER before LAGER, whereas with MINER there are (slightly) fewer alternatives; LINER, FINER, DINER and MISER are all I can think of.
Either way, it appears to be causing more trouble than yesterday’s did so far, although it is early days, so that average may come down.
I had a rather good time of it myself. My random opener was the uncommon ECLAT, which gave me three yellows, and while it still left 63 words, that was a lot better than the 600+ I had yesterday.
Stupidly, I didn’t think to play for an ER word, a mistake that could have come back to haunt me. Instead, I went down the -LA-E route: BLARE, GLARE, FLARE, BLAZE, FLAKE and so on. I played BLARE and though I added an R into the mix, the other three letters all stayed yellow too. At that point I realized my mistake, so had a look at the board to see what ER words could be left. I found three, which was one fewer than the number WordleBot later came up: LAGER, LAYER and LASER. The ‘bot also had LAMER.
Fortunately, I remembered that LASER had been a past Wordle answer (as mentioned above, it appeared in April) and had a hunch that LAYER had too; it had – game #564 in January 2023. With that in mind I player LAGER next and scored a 3/6.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1204)
In a different time zone where it’s still Saturday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1204, 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 M.
M is a middling letter when it comes to starting a word. It sits 10th in the rankings, with 107 occurrences in the 2,309 answers.
- 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 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.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here’s an extra one for game #1205.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer works underground.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1204)
- NYT average score: 4.2
- My score: 4
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- Best start word performance*: SANER (11 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: THETA (604)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1204) was… MINER.
Two ER words in week, then? And another difficult one, with an average score of 4.2. That’s a lot lower than Sunday’s RIDER, which was at 4.6, but then again that had a repeated letter in it, whereas MINER doesn’t.
The challenge here, as always with an ER word, is to narrow down the many, many options – because there are 141 of these answers. And to make matters worse, there are a multitude of different patterns to them. Most have a consonant-vowel-consonant format, sure, but those vowels could be any of the five, and those consonants could be almost any of the 26. Is it LINER? Or POKER? Or WAGER? Or METER? Does it have repeated letters, like RUDER or PARER? Does it start with a vowel, like ELDER or OWNER? The possibilities are… well, not endless, but many.
Identifying that it’s an ER word is the first task, and one that was certainly foremost in my mind once I got a yellow E on THETA, my random start word. So I played LOSER to see if my hunch was right, and it was; that reduced my shortlist from 604 to 46, so a big drop but I still had lots to do.
There was no way I was going to try to solve it with so many words to choose from, so instead I played DENIM next. You might wonder why I included the E in the second position given that it was already green in the fourth slot, but that was in case it was a word like NEVER or NEWER. The other four letters were all among the most common ones that I hadn’t yet played.
DENIM was a “terrific choice”, said WordleBot, and very successful – it gave me green N, yellow I and yellow M and reduced those 46 options to only one. That was MINER, and I played it next for my 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 #1204, Saturday 5 October: MINER
- Wordle #1203, Friday 4 October: TITLE
- Wordle #1202, Thursday 3 October: WAGON
- Wordle #1201, Wednesday 2 October: SHELL
- Wordle #1200, Tuesday 1 October: MODEM
- Wordle #1199, Monday 30 September: CLOUD
- Wordle #1198, Sunday 29 September: RIDER
- Wordle #1197, Saturday 28 September: BRAIN
- Wordle #1196, Friday 27 September: FAITH
- Wordle #1195, Thursday 26 September: THANK
- Wordle #1194, Wednesday 25 September: TORCH
- Wordle #1193, Tuesday 24 September: HANDY
- Wordle #1192, Monday 23 September: STEAM
- Wordle #1191, Sunday 22 September: TEACH
- Wordle #1190, Saturday 21 September: SEVEN
- Wordle #1189, Friday 20 September: SMOKE
- Wordle #1188, Thursday 19 September: PRESS
- Wordle #1187, Wednesday 18 September: FULLY
- Wordle #1186, Tuesday 17 September: BEAUT
- Wordle #1185, Monday 16 September: HONEY
- Wordle #1184, Sunday 15 September: RECUR
- Wordle #1183, Saturday 14 September: BROAD
- Wordle #1182, Friday 13 September: HARSH
- Wordle #1181, Thursday 12 September: BRASS
- Wordle #1180, Wednesday 11 September: AISLE
- Wordle #1179, Tuesday 10 September: REBEL
- Wordle #1178, Monday 9 September: DEBIT
- Wordle #1177, Sunday 8 September: DRAWN
- Wordle #1176, Saturday 7 September: OWNER
- Wordle #1175, Friday 6 September: RERUN
- Wordle #1174, Thursday 5 September: WIDEN
- Wordle #1173, Wednesday 4 September: STERN
- Wordle #1172, Tuesday 3 September: FAINT
- Wordle #1171, Monday 2 September: CAMEL
- Wordle #1170, Sunday 1 September: MUSHY
- Wordle #1169, Saturday 31 August: SPOUT
- Wordle #1168, Friday 30 August: KNAVE
- Wordle #1167, Thursday 29 August: FLUNK
- Wordle #1166, Wednesday 28 August: LITHE
- Wordle #1165, Tuesday 27 August: CROWN
- Wordle #1164, Monday 26 August: STAKE
- Wordle #1163, Sunday 25 August: SKATE
- Wordle #1162, Saturday 24 August: FILET
- Wordle #1161, Friday 23 August: LEECH
- Wordle #1160, Thursday 22 August: BRUTE
- Wordle #1159, Wednesday 21 August: MULCH
- Wordle #1158, Tuesday 20 August: DELAY
- Wordle #1157, Monday 19 August: METER
- Wordle #1156, Sunday 18 August: LANKY
- Wordle #1155, Saturday 17 August: STORM
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.