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 #940) – 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 #940) – 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 #940) – 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 #940) – 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 #940) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #940.
- Today’s Wordle answer is a meal.
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 #940)
Today’s Wordle answer (game #940) is… LUNCH.
As with yesterday’s game, today’s Wordle has an average score of 3.8 – which implies it’s not too difficult, but also not an absolute piece of cake. It uses only common letters, with one minor exception; although H is the sixth most likely to end a Wordle word, it’s only the 14th most common overall. But that’s no big deal.
A bigger problem, potentially, might be if you got caught in an -UNCH trap: LUNCH, PUNCH, HUNCH, MUNCH and BUNCH all have that format. It will have been a particularly tough day for those of you who play on hard mode.
Against that, LUNCH is probably the most obvious of those words to play, because L is a more common letter than the others, and LUNCH is probably the most common word. It’s certainly the tastiest. In fact, I’d argue that lunch is the best meal of the day, because it usually contains sandwiches.
But I digress. To return to the subject at hand, it’s one of those potentially tricky answers, but made easier than it could have been in a couple of ways. And that’s why your score will probably depend greatly on your choice of the best Wordle starting words and on luck, with both that guess and those to follow.
I didn’t get any luck with that first guess. My random word generator served up PATIO, which should have been a good one; WordleBot said it had a skill score of 88/99. However, it drew a complete blank and left me with 349 possible answers. Ouch! If I’d have played TRACE, WordleBot’s new favorite start word, I would instead have had only 43, while the recently deposed SLATE left 106 and CRATE left 64. The better options included CRANE (18), LEANT (4) and LANCE (1).
With no letters to play with, I instead had to work out which of the remaining 21 options would give me the best second guess. I wanted to include both the remaining vowels and it also made sense to include the next three most common consonants R, L and S. However, R seemed slightly less likely to appear given that I knew there was no T or P (it regularly follows both), so I instead added a C and played CLUES.
WordleBot liked this greatly, and it gave me three yellow letters. A green would have been nice, but I had now reduced the options to five, and came up with four of them: LURCH, MULCH, GULCH and LUCKY. Yes, I missed LUNCH – arguably the most obvious of them.
That was a big mistake, because if I’d have seen it I’d definitely have played it next. Instead I went with LUCKY and had to play LUNCH next time for a just-about-acceptable 4/6.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #939)
In a different time zone where it’s still Sunday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #939, 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 D.
D is the ninth most common starting letter in the game, so maybe slightly less likely than you might expect.
- 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 G.
G is not a common letter to end a Wordle answer – in fact only 41 of Wordle’s 2,309 games finish with one.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here’s an extra one for game #939.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is the act of carrying out.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #939)
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #939) was… DOING.
I was a little bit surprised to see that DOING has an average score of as high as 3.8. Yes, that’s still below the 4.0 halfway threshold, but it’s some way above yesterday’s HEARD (3.5), when I thought the opposite would have been true.
Then again, D is not a particularly common starting letter and G is not a particularly common ending. They’re both middling letters in most respects, definitely not as likely to feature in a Wordle answer as the likes of T, R, L or C, and probably that’s the reason why some people must have struggled a little.
That will also have been why hardly any of the best Wordle starting words cut down the options by much. WordleBot’s new favorite start word, TRACE, still left a mammoth 343 possible solutions. Its second favorite, SLATE, left 314. In fact, of the top 20 options only SAINT (which left 35) and CRONE (22) cut down the remaining answers to fewer than 50.
I got lucky with my pick, COVEN. This was chosen randomly and when I first saw it I wasn’t particularly confident; that V was not likely to be helpful. However, the O and N were both included, and with the O turning green too, COVEN actually reduced things rather well.
WordleBot told me afterwards that I now had 40 possibles and though I didn’t know that at the time I had identified about 20 or so; enough that I knew I wasn’t going to score a 2/6 at any rate. Among my words were lots that had the dreaded -OUND pattern (FOUND, MOUND, HOUND etc), while others included BOING, DOING, HONOR, NOISY, NORTH, MOUNT, FOUNT and DOWNY.
I wanted to establish as quickly as possible whether it was an -OUND word, so tried to come up with something that included a D and a U. I mulled over various options and in the end went with DAUNT – which WordleBot said was a “wonderful choice”.
DAUNT gave me a green D at the start, which meant I didn’t need to worry about that -OUND trap. Instead, I had just two words to choose between: DOING and DOWNY. I couldn’t recall either having been a past Wordle answer, so with no better way of choosing between them I went for the more common word. My hunch was correct and I scored a 3/6.
Wordle answers: The past 50
I’ve been playing Wordle every day for more than a year 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 #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
- Wordle #911, Sunday 17 December: BACON
- Wordle #910, Saturday 16 December: GLOBE
- Wordle #909, Friday 15 December: TOPIC
- Wordle #908, Thursday 14 December: WOULD
- Wordle #907, Wednesday 13 December: SPENT
- Wordle #906, Tuesday 12 December: THESE
- Wordle #905, Monday 11 December: HOUSE
- Wordle #904, Sunday 10 December: CHAIN
- Wordle #903, Saturday 9 December: SHIFT
- Wordle #902, Friday 8 December: SHARP
- Wordle #901, Thursday 7 December: SLEEP
- Wordle #900, Wednesday 6 December: WOMAN
- Wordle #899, Tuesday 5 December: YOUNG
- Wordle #898, Monday 4 December: WORST
- Wordle #897, Sunday 3 December: ADAPT
- Wordle #896, Saturday 2 December: GENRE
- Wordle #895, Friday 1 December: TAKEN
- Wordle #894, Thursday 30 November: RESIN
- Wordle #893, Wednesday 29 November: SUSHI
- Wordle #892, Tuesday 28 November: SCOPE
- Wordle #891, Monday 27 November: TAWNY
- Wordle #890, Sunday 26 November: SOLID
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.