Merry Christmas! 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. I won’t say whether this Wordle Word is festive or not, but it’s a nice way to start Christmas Day either way.
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 #920) – 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 #920) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is P.
P is a very common first letter among Wordle answers. It’s the fifth most common in the alphabet and begins 141 solutions in total.
Wordle hints (game #920) – 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 #920) – 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 #920) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #920.
- Today’s Wordle answer is something that features a lot on TechRadar.
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 #920)
Today’s Wordle answer (game #920) is… PHONE.
This is probably the most TechRadar Wordle answer there could ever be. Our site’s raison d’etre is writing about technology, and the best phones are a major part of that. So it’s therefore slightly galling that it took me four guesses to solve this one. Must have been all that Christmas dinner clouding my mind.
Many people will have found it simpler than that. WordleBot, the NYT’s AI helper tool, said it has an average of 3.4, making it a full guess easier than yesterday’s EVOKE (see below). Some of that will have been down to the performance of a couple of the best Wordle starting words – CRANE left only 13 solutions, CRONE six and PLANE four, but I suspect it’s more to do with the fact that PHONE makes a very good guess early on in a game. Four of the five letters are very common, and though H is slightly less so, it’s hardly an X or a Z.
The fact that I didn’t solve it in three myself is due to a monumental error on my third guess. After STARE left me with 106 answers, I played LINGO and cut that list to just two. Well, that’s what WordleBot told me afterwards – because in my mind it was only one.
Yes, I somehow managed to come up with OZONE as the only answer I could think of for my third guess, when PHONE was also there waiting to be discovered. What a fool! I realized my mistake as soon as I played it, but it was too late by then and I had to settle for that slightly frustrating 4/6.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #919)
In a different time zone where it’s still Monday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #919, too.
- Wordle yesterday had vowels in three 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 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.
- 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 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 #919.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer means to bring to mind.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #919)
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #919) was… EVOKE.
Merry Christmas, fellow Wordlers (and everyone else)!
As I’ve discussed at length, we’ve been in the midst of a historically easy patch for Wordle. Over the past 40 days we’ve only five games above 4.0 (and one at 4.0), and nothing above 4.2. The average score for that entire period of nearly six weeks is 3.69 against an overall average of 3.95. It’s been really, really, really easy.
Well, that all changes today. The New York Times’ Christmas gifts to us puzzle addicts is a game that has an average score of 4.4, according to WordleBot, and which will cause many people serious problems. It’s the toughest game since SASSY – which was back on November 14!
The reasons for its difficulty are many. It has a repeated letter, and while that letter is E – the most common one to be repeated in Wordle – that still usually makes the task tougher. It also has a V, which is the fifth most uncommon letter in the game, ahead of only Z, X, Q and J. And it has a K, which sits only just above V as the seventh least common letter. To that you can probably add the fact that EVOKE is not as common a word as, for instance, TABLE, SMALL, BUILT, TOUCH and other recent solutions.
Solving it quickly will have have required a good second guess, because none of the best Wordle starting words helped a lot. Of the top 20 options, according to WordleBot, only CRONE (29) and CLONE (40) cut the answers list to fewer than 50; most words left more than 100 possibles.
STARE, my choice for another week only, left 106 of them, but fortunately I did get that good second guess and managed to come home with a 3/6 score.
My second word was CLING – one of the two words I regularly play after a first guess that gives me only a green E at the end of the answer, the other being LINGO. It wasn’t obvious that it had helped, though, because CLING gave me no new letters at all. However, by ruling out those four very common consonants, together with the I, it cut the answers list by 100 – I now had only six left.
I didn’t know that at the time, because WordleBot only tells you after you’ve finished playing. In fact, I could only find five: EVOKE, EXUDE, BOOZE, FEMME and QUEUE. The one I missed, WordleBot said later, was PEEVE.
I ruled out QUEUE right away, because I remembered that it had been a past Wordle answer (game #883 in November). So I had four to pick from – and of those, EVOKE seemed like the best guess. Why? Well, two of my four words started and ended with E, so even if wrong it would rule out (or in) the other one. Plus, if the O in EVOKE changed to be green it would point the way BOOZE, and if it didn’t (and the first E wasn’t green) then it would have to be FEMME.
My reasoning was slightly flawed because I was unaware that PEEVE could be the solution. But as it happens, the V in EVOKE would have point the way to that too, so simply put, by playing EVOKE I was guaranteed a 4/6 at worst.
Well, I went one better than that. All five letters turned green and I had the lovely Christmas gift of a 3/6 on a tough day.
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 #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
- Wordle #889, Saturday 25 November: GUIDE
- Wordle #888, Friday 24 November: THROW
- Wordle #887, Thursday 23 November: QUEEN
- Wordle #886, Wednesday 22 November: PIXEL
- Wordle #885, Tuesday 21 November: PIANO
- Wordle #884, Monday 20 November: CANDY
- Wordle #883, Sunday 19 November: QUEUE
- Wordle #882, Saturday 18 November: THINK
- Wordle #881, Friday 17 November: TARDY
- Wordle #880, Thursday 16 November: TRUST
- Wordle #879, Wednesday 15 November: SIGHT
- Wordle #878, Tuesday 14 November: SASSY
- Wordle #877, Monday 13 November: GREEN
- Wordle #876, Sunday 12 November: MEANT
- Wordle #875, Saturday 11 November: ACTOR
- Wordle #874, Friday 10 November: LEASH
- Wordle #873, Thursday 9 November: GLAZE
- Wordle #872, Wednesday 8 November: NINJA
- Wordle #871, Tuesday 7 November: LIMIT
- Wordle #870, Monday 6 November: TRADE
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 2023.
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.
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