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 #1184) – 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 #1184) – clue #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.
Wordle hints (game #1184) – 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 #1184) – 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 #1184) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1184.
- Today’s Wordle answer is to happen again.
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 #1184)
- NYT average score: 4.0
- My score: 3
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- Best start word performance*: TASER (6 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: PLIER (12)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1184) is… RECUR.
This game has a lot in common with RERUN from earlier this month: RE at the start, R repeated, U in there as the second vowel, another common consonant for the fifth letter. And it has a similar average score, too: 4.0 today, versus 4.1 for RERUN.
My game went much more smoothly than it did for the earlier game, though, and for several reasons. For one, I was a lot luckier with my start word – today it was PLIER, which left only 12 possible solutions, versus the 223 that I had to contend with last week. Plus, I didn’t make a stupid mistake as I did that day, and was therefore able to walk away with a 3/6 rather than the 5/6 I scored last time.
Three is clearly a good score today, because 4.0 is above the average for the game. The (relative) difficulty, presumably, comes from the repeated Rs – as my analysis of every Wordle answer shows, there are only 60 out of the original 2,309 solutions in which more than one R occurs, which is a mere 2.6% of all games.
I’d actually have expected it to have a higher average still, but mine wasn’t the only start word to perform well today. CRANE, WordleBot’s favorite, left 14 possible answers, as did CRATE, while CARET was at 11 and CARTE at 12. TASER (6) and SANER (7) were the top picks from the ‘bot’s 20 favorites, but aren’t played by many people as far as I know.
With 12 words to choose from, I was able to draw up a shortlist, though I won’t pretend I found them all. But I came up with most of them: DECOR, RECUR, SWEAR, SHEAR, SMEAR, CEDAR, FEMUR, ERROR, DEBAR, TENOR. The two I missed, REBAR and DEMUR, didn’t ultimately impact my game.
I spent a long time deliberating as to what to play next, and in the end came up with MEATS. This was not guaranteed to give me the answer in three, but was as good as I could do. WordleBot suggested DEMON, which was theoretically slightly better, but as it happened both words left two possible answers.
In my case, they were DECOR and RECUR. For no particular reason I went with the latter, and was rewarded with a 3/6.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1183)
In a different time zone where it’s still Saturday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1183, 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 B.
B is a very, very common starting letter in Wordle. In fact, it’s the third most common overall, behind only S and C.
- 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 D.
D is a fairly common letter to end a Wordle answer: it’s the eighth most likely to be in that position in a solution.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here’s an extra one for game #1183.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is expansive.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1183)
- NYT average score: 3.5
- My score: 3
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- Best start word performance*: TRADE (2 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: HAUTE (226)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1183) was… BROAD.
We were back in easy territory yesterday after a couple of harder games, because BROAD has an average score of only 3.5.
A look at my analysis of every Wordle answer will give you one reason why: the letters are all widely used in this game. For instance, B is the third most common starting letter, D the eighth most common ending letter, and R, O and A all just common in general.
The other reason is that one very popular start word made particular progress today: AUDIO left only eight options. Given that it was played by 5% of all Wordlers, that will have helped lots of people score a 3/6 here. There were also good results for CRANE (14 answers) and – best of all – TRADE, which left only two.
Beyond that, there’s not much to report on here. It’s a reasonably mundane Wordle as they go, which is fair enough because they can’t all be interesting like HARSH or RERUN.
My game was also far from exciting. My start word was unlucky, with HAUTE leaving me 226 words to choose from, but my second word DRAIN cut that to only two. WordleBot said I had a lot of luck there, but there was also some thought behind it too; with E, T and H ruled out, my ending choices were drastically reduced in number. The absence of E also made an ER word impossible, which made R an unlikely choice there, so that left Y, N, L and D as the likely candidates. Playing DRAIN enabled me to include two of them, while also putting in the very common R and I, and moving A to its most likely location.
DRAIN proved to be an excellent choice, leaving me only BROAD and ARDOR to choose from. I found both of them, played BROAD as the more common word, and was rewarded with a 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 #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
- Wordle #1154, Friday 16 August: BRACE
- Wordle #1153, Thursday 15 August: ACORN
- Wordle #1152, Wednesday 14 August: SHORE
- Wordle #1151, Tuesday 13 August: NEIGH
- Wordle #1150, Monday 12 August: SKIFF
- Wordle #1149, Sunday 11 August: SCONE
- Wordle #1148, Saturday 10 August: MEDIC
- Wordle #1147, Friday 9 August: OUNCE
- Wordle #1146, Thursday 8 August: SAUCY
- Wordle #1145, Wednesday 7 August: MACAW
- Wordle #1144, Tuesday 6 August: ANVIL
- Wordle #1143, Monday 5 August: ENSUE
- Wordle #1142, Sunday 4 August: LOWER
- Wordle #1141, Saturday 3 August: SCALE
- Wordle #1140, Friday 2 August: FLAKE
- Wordle #1139, Thursday 1 August: CHALK
- Wordle #1138, Wednesday 31 July: PENNE
- Wordle #1137, Tuesday 30 July: FERAL
- Wordle #1136, Monday 29 July: SUPER
- Wordle #1135, Sunday 28 July: SMOCK
- Wordle #1134, Saturday 27 July: JUICE
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.