NYT Wordle today — answer and hints for game #1,007, Friday, March 22
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 #1007) – 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 #1007) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is D.
D is the ninth most common starting letter in the game, so maybe slightly less likely than you might expect.
Wordle hints (game #1007) – 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 #1007) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is Y.
Y is the second most common ending letter in the game, behind only E. In total, 364 Wordle answers end with a Y.
Wordle hints (game #1007) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1007.
- Today’s Wordle answer is matter breaking down.
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 #1007)
- NYT average score: 3.9
- My score: 4
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- Best start word performance*: CARTE (11 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: THRUM (815)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1007) is… DECAY.
This is another relatively tough Wordle, although probably not quite as hard as the previous couple. WordleBot says it has an average score of 3.9, which places it in the middle of the range. It’s probably one of those ones that some people will solve in 3/6 and some in 4/6 or 5/6, but without too many scoring at either extreme.
The differentiating factor will probably be your start word – some cut down the answers considerably, some made very little headway. Consider WordleBot’s three favorites, for instance: CRANE left only 13 possible solutions and TRACE left 23 – but SLATE left 140.
My random word was worse still. THRUM was a washout for me, giving me no letters at all and leaving 815 options. Getting home from there in only two more guesses was never going to be easy, and indeed it proved beyond me.
I wasn’t helped much by my second guess, PLANE. WordleBot said it was “terrific”, but it only gave me two yellows and still left 36 solutions. Or at least that’s what the ‘bot said when I consulted it later. At the time, I had no idea there were that many, and in fact I’d question whether there really were. That’s because most of WordleBot’s list were ED-ending words, which are very unlikely to be answers; prevailing wisdom has always had it that past participles wouldn’t be included.
That all changed when we had FRIED a few weeks away. I reckon that’s skewed the ‘bot’s thinking on how likely they are to be solutions, because its list contained the likes of CAGED, FAKED, BAKED, WADED, WAVED, ADDED and loads more that probably won’t ever be solutions.
Anyway, they weren’t contenders in my mind – in fact I could hardly find any, only coming up with ABBEY, CAGEY and ESSAY. I played CAGEY mainly because it didn’t contain a repeated letter, and therefore would give me more information if it was wrong. It was wrong – but it did the job I wanted it to, giving me the green Y and yellow C that pointed the way to DECAY. I played that next for an acceptable 4/6.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1006)
In a different time zone where it’s still Thursday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1006, 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 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.
- 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 #1006.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is an area of comparative darkness.
Yesterday’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
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1006) was… 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 Wednesday’s LINGO. 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.
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 #1006, Thursday 21 March: SHADE
- 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
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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