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 #946) – 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 #946) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is N.
N is a surprisingly uncommon starting letter. Only 37 games begin with it and it ranks just 18th in this regard.
Wordle hints (game #946) – 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 #946) – 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 #946) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #946.
- Today’s Wordle answer is a direction.
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 #946)
Today’s Wordle answer (game #946) is… NORTH.
The week ends as it started, with a Wordle that people are solving in 3.8 guesses. It’s another one that could be considered reasonably tricky if you got unlucky with your choice of the best Wordle starting words – or indeed, if like me you use a random starter each day. But I’d be very surprised if many people failed it, and I’m sure there will be plenty of 3/6s and maybe a smattering of 2/6s.
There’s nothing particular notable about it from a letter point of view, and as a word it’s another very common one. About the only mildly complicating factors are that it only has one vowel, and that not that many start words cut down the options by a lot.
Even there, though, there’s a mixed picture. The best two words, according to WordleBot, are TRACE and SLATE; they left 39 and 45 options respectively. STARE, another very popular choice, left 48. But a few words did reduce the answer pool to single figures, for instance CARTE (9) and TRAIN (5).
That latter word had a big part to play in my game. My starter word was BOULE, which should have been a decent choice but which was rather unlucky and which left 133 remaining answers.
Given that U and E were both ruled out already, it made sense for me to include A and I, because it was unlikely that O would be the only vowel. Not impossible – the answer could have been TOOTH or WOODY or DODGY or indeed NORTH – but still more likely than not. I also wanted to include some common consonants, because I’d only played L and B thus far. TRAIN therefore seemed to tick all of the boxes.
I hoped it would narrow things down, obviously – but I didn’t expect it to reduce those 133 possible answers to just a single solution. However, that’s what happened. T, R and N all turned yellow, and when I began arranging them into various combinations I soon realized that NORTH was the only way everything fit together. So I played that next and scored my 3/6. And – drumroll please! – beat WordleBot too, because it could only solve it in four.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #945)
In a different time zone where it’s still Saturday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #945, 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 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.
- 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 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.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here’s an extra one for game #945.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is big.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #945)
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #945) was… LARGE.
This really has been a very easy Wordle week. With only Sunday to go, we’ve had six puzzles with average scores ranging from 3.3 to 3.8, giving an overall average so far of just over 3.5. And coincidentally, that’s the score for today’s game, LARGE.
That’s about the only notable thing to say about it. There’s a G in it, for the second day in a row, it starts with an L – which is pretty common (we had another on Monday in the form of LUNCH) – and ends with an E, which is something I say on a very regular basis. It’s a dull, workaday Wordle.
A few of the best Wordle starting words cut down the options greatly, for instance CARTE left only four, CARET five and LANCE six, but most were in the 10-20 range. Easy, but not ridiculously so.
My task was considerably harder, given that WOMEN, my random start word, left 478 answers. Oh dear. But I took the easy option and played TRACE next, reasoning that the best start word would probably also make a great second guess. I was right to an extent – it cut the options down by 468 – but I still had 10 to choose from.
All of that’s according to WordleBot, of course, because I didn’t come up with 10 myself. Nowhere near that. In fact, I only found four: LARGE, BARGE, AZURE and RAISE. Or the rest, a couple might be genuine Wordle answers – for instance PARSE and SABRE – but the rest seem a lot less likely. Is AERIE really going to be an answer? Is AFIRE? Is BARRE? Or PADRE.
With the words I had to pick from, LARGE seemed like the best option. For starters, I was fairly certain that AZURE had been a past Wordle answer (it had), which left three to choose from. And given that LARGE and BARGE had the same format it seemed sensible to play one of those two, rather than RAISE. If I’d come up with some of the others maybe I’d have played something else, but I hadn’t so I didn’t.
Instead, I played LARGE in blissful ignorance and scored a slightly (but only slightly) fortunate 3/6, for the fourth day in a row.
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 #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
- 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
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.