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 #955) – 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 #955) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is E.
We don’t get many Wordle answers that start with an E – though it’s the most common letter in the game, it’s only the 14th most likely to begin a solution.
Wordle hints (game #955) – 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 #955) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is 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.
Wordle hints (game #955) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #955.
- Today’s Wordle answer is to eject from somewhere or something.
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 #955)
Today’s Wordle answer (game #955) is… EXPEL.
OK, now we’re talking. For the third day in a row we have a genuinely difficult Wordle to solve: WordleBot, the NYT’s all-knowing game guru, states that people are solving EXPEL in an average of 4.6 guesses. That follows 4.4 for yesterday’s LEGGY and 4.7 for Sunday’s EMBER.
The last time we had three successive games of above 4.0 was way back in August 2023, when SNAKY (4.1), INDEX (4.2) and SCRUB (4.1) appeared on consecutive days. But as you can see, those three games were all much easier than the most recent trio. Between them, the past three have an overall average of 4.57 – and to find another three games that were as hard as that, you’d need to scroll back to June last year, when we had JAZZY (5.5), HUMID (3.8) and NANNY (5.2) for an overall average of 4.83.
OK, I’m starting to bore even myself now, so I’ll move on. The key point is that today’s game is another really tough one. Partly that’s because it contains an X, the third least common letter in the game. A mere 37 of Wordle’s original 2,309 answers contain one, so it’s never a letter you’d expect to turn up – PIXEL, in November (game #886) was the last example.
Another factor is that it once again has two Es; not uncommon compared to other repeats, but still a lot less likely than getting just one of them. And for a third complication, I’ll throw in the fact that there are a few words that use most of the same letters. EXCEL is the obvious one, but the likes of REPEL and LEPER both have four letters in common, albeit in different positions.
In terms of the best Wordle starting words I might as well copy and paste yesterday’s words on this subject, because it was a similar situation. Three words were helpful: PLATE, PLANE and PLACE, all of which left 11 options. Most, however, weren’t.
My starter today was ARROW, which was in the latter camp: it gave me zero letters and left 722 answers. With very little info to go on, I focused on the most common remaining letters, which were E and I in terms of vowels, and T, L, S and N for consonants. There were various approaches I could have taken, and I nearly went with STILE, which WordleBot said was its choice. But instead I picked INLET, and that worked well.
INLET gave me a yellow L and green E, and cut the options to 14. I probably should have got home in two more guesses from here, but I mistakenly thought there were far fewer choices; I had BLEED and BLEEP, LEVEL, BEZEL and BEVEL written down, but had missed nine others including the obvious likes of SLEEP and SLEEK, as well as the actual answer.
So, I played BEVEL thinking that would point the way to the answer, but all it did was cut down my choices to two. Worse still, I still only found one of these, EXCEL, then played it immediately rather than looking for a little longer. D’oh! The upshot of all that was that I had to settle for another 5/6, my second in three games.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #954)
In a different time zone where it’s still Monday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #954, too.
- Wordle yesterday had 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).
- 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 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 Y.
Y is the second most common ending letter in the game, behind only E. In total, 364 Wordle answers end with a Y.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here’s an extra one for game #954.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer has long lower limbs.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #954)
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #954) was… LEGGY.
Well, this really is a rare occurrence: two difficult Wordles in a row! After the truly tough EMBER rated an average score of 4.7 yesterday, LEGGY is apparently being solved in 4.4 guesses across the thousands of people who have played it.
I’m surprised it’s not higher than that, frankly – because LEGGY may be one of the more unusual words to feature as a Wordle answer. It’s not as obscure as the likes of BORAX or GUPPY or EGRET, maybe, but it’s not a word you see often these days. That may be part of the reason why the score is as high as it is, because people may have dismissed it as unlikely; I certainly did.
Of course the other major complication here is the repeated letter G. Only 11 of Wordle’s 2,309 original answers have two Gs, with BUGGY, SOGGY and FOGGY being the examples that have already appeared in the game. So be warned: there are still seven more of these to come.
It’s another one where many of the best Wordle starting words were less than helpful. LEAST and LEANT both cut the number of options to 10, but all of the popular choices were far higher than that. For instance, TRACE left 263, SLATE 98 and STARE 248.
My choice, EIGHT, fared better than many – it left 34. Well, I say ‘choice’, but it was once again a randomly generated starter word, and not one that I’d have expected to be as successful as that. But the inclusion of the G proved fortuitous, and really I should have solved it in 3/6 rather than 4/6.
My mistake, such as it was, was on my second guess. I looked at the yellow E and green G, and tried to work out what kind of format the word might have. After a bit of head-scratching I realized that a GUE ending was quite common: VOGUE, VAGUE, ARGUE, ROGUE, SEGUE. Rather than take a little longer looking for other possibilities – such as ANGEL, ANGLE and LEGAL – I decided to go with SEGUE. I didn’t expect it to be correct, but I thought it might be useful even so. However, it was probably a bit wasteful to a) include a second E as early as this and b) include the already-green G.
WordleBot suggested that AURAL would have been a better guess, and indeed it would have been – it would have left only one solution, as would LUNAR, BALER, LABOR, RURAL, LAGER and others. SEGUE, meanwhile, left five.
I didn’t know any of this at the time of course, merely that I still had only two green letters. So at this stage I did a comprehensive audit of words that could fit and came up with four: LEGAL, REGAL, LEGGY, and VEGAN (I missed BEGAN, inexplicably). Based on those four, I immediately dismissed LEGGY as unlikely and decided to play LEGAL; if the AL at the end turned green it would be REGAL, if not it would be VEGAN (or so I thought).
Instead, the LEG bit turned green, meaning I had to revisit my assumption about LEGGY. That was now the only word that would work, so I played that next for a 4/6.
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 #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
- 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
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.