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 #962) – 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 #962) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is W.
W is a fairly average letter when it comes to starting an answer. There are 82 solutions that begin with a W, with means that it ranks 13th – so right in the middle of the alphabet.
Wordle hints (game #962) – 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 #962) – 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 #962) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here's an extra one for game #962.
- Today’s Wordle answer is what one of these?
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 #962)
Today's Wordle answer (game #962) is… WHICH.
Did you enjoy this one? I certainly didn't. From a terrible start word to a heap of bad luck in the middle and then a poor choice at the end, I struggled throughout.
The frustrating thing is that WHICH is one of the most common words ever to be an answer in the game; according to WordAndPhraseInfo.com, a site which records how widely used a word is, it ranks 58th. And among Wordle answers, I think that means only THEIR (36th), WOULD (41st), ABOUT (46th) and THERE (53rd) are more common.
But common or not, this is a potentially difficult one for several reasons. For a start, it contains two Hs, one of only 10 games to do so. HATCH (game #113) and HUTCH (#376) are previous examples. What's more, it also contains a W; this is the sixth least common letter, ahead of only V, Z, X, Q and J.
Very few of the best Wordle starting words helped much, either, which is not so surprising give that WHICH doesn't contain an E, S, L, A, T or R, letters which feature in most of them. TRACE, WordleBot's favorite, left 43 options because it does contain a C, but the likes of SLATE (314) and STARE (321) were a long way off. Only one of the top 20 made any real inroads; SLICE cut the options to 10, while TRICE (just outside the top 20) left eight.
Those three factors are enough to lift it above many Wordles, and I suspect that it's only the commonality of WHICH that has kept it below 4.0; WordleBot says its average score is 3.9.
My opener was close to useless. My random word generator gave me JIFFY, which pairs the least common letter in the game, J, with a repeated F. Not good. Fortunately, it did have an I, so the number of options left to me were, um, merely 462.
I decided to right those wrongs by playing STILE, which added three very common consonants plus E. But I had terrible luck, with none of the new letters changing color, although the I did go green.
I still had 48 options left, WordleBot said later, but all I knew at this time was that I was a long way away from solving it. Things seemingly didn't get any better with my third guess, PRONG, which gave me no new letters at all.
So here I was, about to take my fourth guess and still with only one uncovered letter – despite now having played 13 of them. Amazingly, WordleBot said I now only had five words left to me, but I didn't know that at the time and could only find four: CHICK, WHIZZ, WHICH and QUICK.
If I'd have known that there was only one more, HAIKU, to be discovered, I'd have guessed one of my quartet – because any of them would have ruled out the others. Indeed, WordleBot chastised me for not doing so.
However, I thought there might be others out there, so played WHACK in order to narrow things down some more. The upshot was that I eventually scraped home with a 5/6. And no, I did not enjoy a bit of it.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #961)
In a different time zone where it's still Monday? Don't worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #961, 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 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.
- 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 #961.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is to drive away.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #961)
Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #961) was… REPEL.
If, like me, you prefer Wordle when it's on the more difficult side, you'll be happy again today. WordleBot says people are solving REPEL in an average of 4.2 guesses, which follows 4.7 yesterday (see below). And this is part of a wider trend.
In the past 11 days, we've had seven games with an average score of 4.2 or above, as measured by WordleBot. Whereas in the previous 11 games, we had none. Zero. Zip. Zilch. In fact, in the previous 59 Wordles, we had only three games with an average of 4.2 or higher. That's quite the turnaround.
Statistically, it should be no surprise that this has happened. Wordle's answers are, for the most part, chosen randomly. Or rather, they were originally placed randomly in a set order by the game's creator Josh Wardle, and haven't been changed since then, beyond the odd intervention by the New York Times' editors since they bought it in 2022.
Anyway, the point is that they aren't organized into a nice sensible order in which easy follows difficult follows medium, and repeat ad infinitum (or until Wordle's 2,309 original answers are used up in another couple of years). Instead, they clump. And right now, they're clumping into a morass of difficult words.
REPEL, like yesterday's VERGE, contains two Es. And also like yesterday's game, it has a pronounced similarity to several other words including REPLY, REBEL, REVEL and LEPER. It's not quite as tough as VERGE, but it's still hard.
It's also a word that the absolute best Wordle starting words didn't help with a lot. TRACE, for instance, left 170 possible answers and SLATE 98. The most successful of the top 20 were those that included a P, an L and an E: PLATE (11), PLANE (13) and PLACE (also 13).
My starter, in contrast, was SEGUE – which had neither a P or an L, but which did have two Es. That was very lucky, and cut my options down to 41.
My first instinct on seeing those two Es was to check for an ER word, because if it had been one I'd have wanted to find out as soon as possible. So for my second guess I went for LINER; it added three more common consonants and moved the second E to its likely location.
I was right about the E, which turned green, but not the ER bit; there was an R, but it went elsewhere. This gave me lots of information. In fact, it narrowed my options down to only three: REPEL, REBEL and REVEL.
If I'd had a better grasp of past Wordle answers, I'd have realized that REVEL had actually been a solution already. Unfortunately, my memory isn't quite that good – REVEL was an answer back in March last year.
I could have guessed one of those three anyway, and ended up with a 5/6 at worst, but instead I decided to guarantee a 4/6 by playing BLEEP; if the B turned yellow it would be REBEL, if the P then REPEL, if neither then REVEL. As it happened, it was the P that changed color, so I knew it had to be REPEL and scored a WordleBot-beating 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 #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
- Wordle #921, Wednesday 27 December: DAISY
- Wordle #920, Tuesday 26 December: PHONE
- Wordle #919, Monday 25 December: EVOKE
- Wordle #918, Sunday 24 December: GRACE
- Wordle #917, Saturday 23 December: SLOPE
- Wordle #916, Friday 22 December: TOUCH
- Wordle #915, Thursday 21 December: BUILT
- Wordle #914, Wednesday 20 December: SMALL
- Wordle #913, Tuesday 19 December: TABLE
- Wordle #912, Monday 18 December: FUNNY
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.