A new NYT Wordle puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing ‘today’s game’ while others are playing ‘yesterday’s’. If you’re looking for Thursday’s puzzle instead then click here.
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? TechRadar’s Quordle today page contains hints and answers for that game, and you can also take a look at our NYT Strands today and NYT Connections today pages for our 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 #1399) – 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 #1399) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is D.
D is the ninth most common starting letter in the game, so maybe slightly less likely than you might expect.
Wordle hints (game #1399) – 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 #1399) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is E.
E is the most common letter to end a Wordle answer by far. That’s one of the reasons why many of the best start words, including SLATE, CRANE, CRATE and STARE, all end with one.
Wordle hints (game #1399) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1399.
- Today’s Wordle answer is a mournful song.
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 #1399)
- NYT average score: 4.1
- My score: 4
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- My start word performance: SLING (27 remaining answers)
- WordleBot’s start word performance: CRANE (46)
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1399) is… DIRGE.
DIRGE is one of those words whose meaning has evolved in recent years, or that is in the process of evolving at least. Formally, it meant a slow, mournful piece of music – something for a funeral, for instance.
However, I’ve also seen it used (and used it myself, back in my music journalist days) to mean a bland, boring song – which is an alternative definition found on Wiktionary, for instance.
Either way, it makes for a moderately hard Wordle answer, with an average score of 4.1 at the time of writing.
I’m a little surprised it’s as high as that, because there’s nothing fundamentally difficult about it. Maybe it’s the fact that the more obvious RIDGE uses the same five letters but in a different order, or that the likes of DRIVE and DIVER contain four of them.
Whatever the reason, I’m disappointed to have only managed a four myself, despite beating the average. That’s because I got off to a really good start today, but couldn’t capitalize on it.
Yes, after a couple of days on which my opening guess left more than 1,000 possible solutions, today’s random start word, SLING, left only 27. The fact that it took three more guesses to solve it from there was pretty annoying.
I didn’t do a lot wrong, but my second guess could perhaps have been better. I went with RIGHT, reasoning that I should try to place the yellow G and I. But WordleBot suggested that RATED would have been better.
It was technically correct, in that it would have left only one answer, whereas RIGHT left me with a 50/50. But while I’m not against leaving out yellow letters sometimes, I don’t generally do it as early as this. This will have to be one thing the ‘Bot and I disagree upon.
Anyway, that left me with a choice between GIVER and DIRGE. Fully aware that we are still well overdue an ER word, I was convinced that the former would be the solution.
Reader, I was wrong. I was left to play DIRGE next time out instead, and had to settle for a frustrating four.
How did you do today? Send me an email or let me know in the comments.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1398)
In a different time zone where it’s still Thursday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1398, 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 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.
- 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 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 #1398.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is what you did (or might have done) when you weren’t sitting.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1398)
- NYT average score: 4.3 (revised)
- My score: 4
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- My start word performance: JUICY (1,081 remaining answers)
- WordleBot’s start word performance: CRANE (356)
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1398) was… STOOD.
Oh dear! Yes, it’s an OO Wordle – and yes, it’s the most difficult game we’ve had in more than a week.
In fact, it’s the trickiest since HAZEL 10 days ago, and while it isn’t quite as tough as that one (which had an average score of 4.9), its rating of 4.2 implies that it is causing plenty of problems (note – revised to 4.3).
Surprisingly, it didn’t cause me as many as yesterday’s MORAL did. I scored a four, so under par, despite a truly appalling first guess and despite the answer having my most hated format in the whole of Wordle.
That start word, though – wow! My random word generator served up JUICY, which contains the least common letter in the whole game, but no E, no A, no R, no T, no L, S, no N. Thanks, random word generator!
That left me with 1,081 possible answers (a couple fewer than I had at the same stage on Wednesday) and headed for another poor result. But then I got lucky, and twice in a row.
First, I played LATER. This was chosen partly to guard against the possibility of it being an ER word, a format for which we are now well overdue. We’ve not had one since TIMER a month ago, so the next one is surely just around the corner.
That gave me a single yellow T, but I’d ruled out several very common letters now, and the net effect was that I reduced those 1,000-plus options to a mere 13.
I didn’t find them all, but I came up with enough to play STOMP next. That was one word on my list, and I also had STOOP, STOOD, BOOST, GHOST, BOOTH, TOOTH, SHOOT and SNOOT.
I missed a few, then, but it didn’t hurt me – because I had a huge stroke of good fortune when the first three letters all turned green. That left STOOD as the only possible solution, so I scored an unlikely four.
Wordle answers: The past 50
I’ve been playing Wordle every day for more than three 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 #1398, Thursday 17 April: STOOD
- Wordle #1397, Wednesday 16 April: MORAL
- Wordle #1396, Tuesday 15 April: ASHEN
- Wordle #1395, Monday 14 April: CREST
- Wordle #1394, Sunday 13 April: LAUGH
- Wordle #1393, Saturday 12 April: NURSE
- Wordle #1392, Friday 11 April: ARROW
- Wordle #1391, Thursday 10 April: TURBO
- Wordle #1390, Wednesday 9 April: WHEAT
- Wordle #1389, Tuesday 8 April: SPARE
- Wordle #1388, Monday 7 April: HAZEL
- Wordle #1387, Sunday 6 April: VILLA
- Wordle #1386, Saturday 5 April: FOAMY
- Wordle #1385, Friday 4 April: KRILL
- Wordle #1384, Thursday 3 April: SHEAR
- Wordle #1383, Wednesday 2 April: CURSE
- Wordle #1382, Tuesday 1 April: JEWEL
- Wordle #1381, Monday 31 March: BOOTY
- Wordle #1380, Sunday 30 March: QUOTA
- Wordle #1379, Saturday 29 March: SORRY
- Wordle #1378, Friday 28 March: VERSE
- Wordle #1377, Thursday 27 March: SHEET
- Wordle #1376, Wednesday 26 March: ELBOW
- Wordle #1375, Tuesday 25 March: SHELF
- Wordle #1374, Monday 24 March: ANGLE
- Wordle #1373, Sunday 23 March: DOPEY
- Wordle #1372, Saturday 22 March: AMBLE
- Wordle #1371, Friday 21 March: NUDGE
- Wordle #1370, Thursday 20 March: BASTE
- Wordle #1369, Wednesday 19 March: SPARK
- Wordle #1368, Tuesday 18 March: TIMER
- Wordle #1367, Monday 17 March: LASSO
- Wordle #1366, Sunday 16 March: STAMP
- Wordle #1365, Saturday 15 March: LADLE
- Wordle #1364, Friday 14 March: PIECE
- Wordle #1363, Thursday 13 March: CHASE
- Wordle #1362, Wednesday 12 March: MANGO
- Wordle #1361, Tuesday 11 March: TRACK
- Wordle #1360, Monday 10 March: SPITE
- Wordle #1359, Sunday 9 March: GREED
- Wordle #1358, Saturday 8 March: NAVEL
- Wordle #1357, Friday 7 March: TROOP
- Wordle #1356, Thursday 6 March: ALERT
- Wordle #1355, Wednesday 5 March: SCRUM
- Wordle #1354, Tuesday 4 March: CHECK
- Wordle #1353, Monday 3 March: SPEAR
- Wordle #1352, Sunday 2 March: DEITY
- Wordle #1351, Saturday 1 March: HOVER
- Wordle #1350, Friday 28 February: FUZZY
- Wordle #1349, Thursday 27 February: LODGE
- Wordle #1348, Wednesday 26 February: AWARD
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.