NYT Wordle today — answer and hints for game #1,006, Thursday, March 21
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 #1006) – 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 #1006) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is 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.
Wordle hints (game #1006) – 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 #1006) – 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 #1006) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1006.
- Today’s Wordle answer is an area of comparative darkness.
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 #1006)
- NYT average score: 4.1
- My score: 3
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- Best start word performance*: TRADE (6 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: SYNOD (7)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1006) is… SHADE.
It’s not often that I beat WordleBot, which is a constant source of frustration to me. After all, we humans haven’t lost the war against AI yet. But – happy days – I defeated it today.
SHADE is another reasonably difficult Wordle, but not for the same reason as yesterday’s LINGO (see below). It has an average score of 4.1, but whereas LINGO was tricky because the letters were not where you’d expect them, this suffers on account of there being so many similarly spelled words.
Change the D and you could have SHARE or SHAPE or SHAKE or SHALE or SHAME or SHAVE. Change the H and you could have SPADE. Change the E and there’s SHADY. Change two letters and there are a whole bunch more options… That’s to be expected, because as I show in my analysis of every Wordle answer, S is the most common start letter and E the most common at the end.
In fact, the S—E format occurs in 74 out of Wordle’s 2,309 answers, making it the most common start-end combo in the game (with nearly twice as many examples as the next highest, S—Y).
Put all that together and you likely had a hard time narrowing down the options, even if your start word cut the list down considerably. And some did: SLATE, STARE and STALE all left 14 options, TRADE left five. My random opener was the “distinctive” SYNOD, which was similarly successful: it left only seven.
I came up with four of those myself – SLIDE, SHADE, SPADE and SUEDE – but missed the admittedly more obscure SEDER, SEDGE and SIDLE. For that reason WordleBot deemed my second guess, WHELP, to be a little lucky; it did the trick, but could still have left me with a 50/50 if the answer had been SEDER or SEDGE. Given that neither of those was very likely, I think I’ll ignore WordleBot’s sour grapes.
Instead, WHELP gave me the H that pointed the way to the actual answer, and I played SHADE next for a welcome 3/6. Seems the human era is not quite over yet.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1005)
In a different time zone where it’s still Wednesday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1005, 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 O.
O is a middling ending letter. It ranks 12th in this regard, and finishes 58 Wordle answers in total.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here’s an extra one for game #1005.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is a foreign language.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1005)
- NYT average score: 4.2
- My score: 3
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- Best start word performance*: PLANE (11 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: SHUNT (256)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1005) was… LINGO.
If yesterday’s game provided a classic example from me of how not to play Wordle, I’ll offer up today’s as the antithesis.
WordleBot suggests most people are finding LINGO to be a fairly tough puzzle: it has an average score of 4.2, which makes it the most difficult game since HUNCH two weeks ago. However, I scored a 3/6 thanks to a very lucky second guess that cut down my options from 256 to one in one fell swoop. Nice!
I’m not surprised that LINGO is proving difficult, because though most of the letters are common, they’re not necessarily where you’d expect them. Take L: it’s the sixth most common letter in the game, but as I show in my analysis of every Wordle answer, it’s far less likely to appear at the start of a solution than it is elsewhere. Ditto O, which is a lot less common at the end of a word than it is in any of the three middle slots.
As a word, it’s not exactly obscure – but nor is it an everyday term, and it’s not the kind of word you’d necessarily spot when playing around with three or four of those letters.
Lots of Wordlers will have also been disappointed with their start word today, because very few of them were particularly helpful. CRANE, WordleBot’s favorite, left 81 possibles, while SLATE was at 106 and TRACE at 343.
My opener, SHUNT, was towards the upper end of that range, with the single yellow N that I uncovered leaving me with 256 options. But on the plus side, I knew what to play next – LONER has worked well for me in other games, so I dug it out again here with the hope of narrowing that list down to single figures.
It worked better than I could have expected, giving me a green L and yellow O, while turning the N green too. I knew a vowel would go between the L and N, and the only ones left were I and A, so finding LINGO was now not too hard. I played that next for a 3/6.
Wordle answers: The past 50
I’ve been playing Wordle every day for more than two 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 #1005, Wednesday 20 March: LINGO
- Wordle #1004, Tuesday 19 March: ABIDE
- Wordle #1003, Monday 18 March: SPELT
- Wordle #1002, Sunday 17 March: SNORT
- Wordle #1001, Saturday 16 March: TOXIN
- Wordle #1000, Friday 15 March: ERUPT
- Wordle #999, Thursday 14 March: SINCE
- Wordle #998, Wednesday 13 March: LOCAL
- Wordle #997, Tuesday 12 March: HEAVE
- Wordle #996, Monday 11 March: PESKY
- Wordle #995, Sunday 10 March: GRASP
- Wordle #994, Saturday 9 March: CHEER
- Wordle #993, Friday 8 March: EARLY
- Wordle #992, Thursday 7 March: CLONE
- Wordle #991, Wednesday 6 March: TEARY
- Wordle #990, Tuesday 5 March: HUNCH
- Wordle #989, Monday 4 March: FLAME
- Wordle #988, Sunday 3 March: STATE
- Wordle #987, Saturday 2 March: URBAN
- Wordle #986, Friday 1 March: FORTY
- Wordle #985, Thursday 29 February: IMAGE
- Wordle #984, Wednesday 28 February: DEVIL
- Wordle #983, Tuesday 27 February: SENSE
- Wordle #982, Monday 26 February: OFTEN
- Wordle #981, Sunday 25 February: SMITH
- Wordle #980, Saturday 24 February: PIPER
- Wordle #979, Friday 23 February: APART
- Wordle #978, Thursday 22 February: HEAVY
- Wordle #977, Wednesday 21 February: BUILD
- Wordle #976, Tuesday 20 February: MATCH
- Wordle #975, Monday 19 February: PRICE
- Wordle #974, Sunday 18 February: RIDGE
- Wordle #973, Saturday 17 February: PSALM
- Wordle #972, Friday 16 February: STASH
- Wordle #971, Thursday 15 February: ASCOT
- Wordle #970, Wednesday 14 February: TALON
- Wordle #969, Tuesday 13 February: SCRAM
- Wordle #968, Monday 12 February: PASTA
- Wordle #967, Sunday 11 February: NEVER
- Wordle #966, Saturday 10 February: FRIED
- Wordle #965, Friday 9 February: STIFF
- Wordle #964, Thursday 8 February: PLACE
- Wordle #963, Wednesday 7 February: AFTER
- Wordle #962, Tuesday 6 February: WHICH
- Wordle #961, Monday 5 February: REPEL
- Wordle #960, Sunday 4 February: VERGE
- Wordle #959, Saturday 3 February: MICRO
- Wordle #958, Friday 2 February: CLEFT
- Wordle #957, Thursday 1 February: ALIVE
- Wordle #956, Wednesday 31 January: BULKY
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.
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