NYT Wordle today — answer and hints for game #1,038, Monday, April 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, and you can also take a look at my new NYT Strands today page for my verdict on the New York Times’ latest brainteaser.
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 #1,038) – 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 #1,038) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is 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.
Wordle hints (game #1,038) – 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 #1,038) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is R.
R is a very common letter to end a Wordle answer – it’s actually the 4th most common there, behind E, Y and T.
Wordle hints (game #1,038) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1,038.
- Today’s Wordle answer is a beam of light.
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 #1,038)
- NYT average score: 3.3
- My score: 3
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- Best start word performance*: LEAST, TASER (1 remaining answer)
- My start word performance: DIRGE (200)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1,038) is… LASER.
What a difference a day makes, eh? Where yesterday’s Wordle was the hardest of the year so far, today’s is among the easiest. WordleBot says it has an average score of a mere 3.3, which is more than two whole guesses fewer than the number for JOLLY (5.4). Only one game has had a lower average in 2024: RAISE, just a few days ago.
It has all of the hallmarks of an easy game, namely five common letters with no repeats, not too many similarly spelled words and some great results for some of the most popular Wordle start words.
In fact, the only thing that might have caught out a few people today is that some might think it’s spelled LAZER, not LASER. It’s not, because it’s an acronym formed from ‘light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation’. So there.
Nine of WordleBot’s top 20 start words reduced the number of answers to fewer than 10 today, among them SLATE (two remaining solutions) and STARE (three). Between them they accounted for 7% of all opening words here, so I suspect lots of players will have scored 2/6s.
That was a little beyond me, and I had to settled for a score of three instead. But given that my random start word, DIRGE, left 200 answers, that shows just how simple LASER was.
Admittedly, I needed a big dollop of luck for that. I went with TASER for my second guess, because I wanted to guard against the possibility of an ER word and T, A and S were just about the most common letters that I’d not yet played. I say ‘just about’, because swapping the S for an L and playing LATER would technically have been a better choice in terms of pure frequency. But against that, I knew that L isn’t so likely to start an answer as T, and T is more likely to appear at the beginning than it is in the middle.
So, I went with TASER instead and that proved incredibly fortunate; it gave me four green letters and left only one possible solution. That was LASER and I played it next for my 3/6.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1,037)
In a different time zone where it’s still Sunday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1,037, 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 J.
J is the least common letter overall in Wordle, but is only the fourth least likely starting letter. That’s because it begins 20 out of the 27 answers it appears in (Y, Z and X are all less common starting letters).
- 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 #1,037.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is full of high spirits.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1,037)
- NYT average score: 5.4
- My score: 5
- WordleBot’s score: 5
- Best start word performance*: STALE (49 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: STRAY (178)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1,037) was… JOLLY.
Buckle up – because we’re going on a long and arduous journey across Wordleland today.
By my reckoning, JOLLY – which has an average score of 5.4 – is the hardest Wordle of 2024 so far. No, more than that – it’s the hardest since 1 June 2023, when JAZZY (game #712) scored a 5.5. Wow!
In fact, it’s the equal fourth hardest Wordle ever, or at least ever among the 749 games I have a recorded score for, since WordleBot started in April 2022. Only PARER (#454, average 6.3), MUMMY (#491, 5.8) and JAZZY (#712) have been tougher, while FOYER (#304), RIPER (#613) and JOKER (#675) all matched it on 5.4.
What’s not so hard is establishing why it’s so difficult. Of those six toughies listed above, two start with a J, two have a repeated letter and all suffer to some extent from the too-many-answers problem.
JOLLY has all of those factors, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see that average score grow higher still as the day goes on.
Let’s start with the J. As I show in my analysis of every Wordle answer, it’s the least common letter in the game. It’s found in only 27 Wordle answers out of the original 2,309 and of those 27, eight have now appeared – JAZZY, JOKER, JOLLY, plus JOUST (3.8), EJECT (4.4), NINJA (4.6), ENJOY (4.6) and JUDGE (5.2). So far, the average score for a J game is a whopping 4.65.
In terms of the repeated letter, L is actually pretty common – only E and O are more likely to appear more than once in an answer. But it’s still a lot less likely than getting a single L, with 71 repeats compared to 574 games where there’s a sole instance of it.
And then finally – and possibly more importantly for the high score – is the too-many-answers problem. We’re looking here at -OLLY, which can also be LOLLY, HOLLY, GOLLY, FOLLY, DOLLY and MOLLY. But beyond those obvious examples there’s also WOOLY, LOWLY, LOBBY and various other options that differ by a couple of letters but which were played in large numbers today.
It’s all set up to be a nightmare game, then, and I’m relieved to have escaped with a 5/6 myself. At least start words aren’t much of a factor here; the best of WordleBot’s top 20 was STALE, which left 49 answers, but the rest were all above 100, so the fact that my random STRAY left 178 was not so bad in context.
And on the plus side, I already had the Y in place, which many others won’t have done. I followed this up with OLDEN, because I know from experience that Y-ending games tend to have lots of L, D or Ns directly before them, and often repeated: BULLY, FUNNY, BUDDY, WOODY, MUDDY and so on. WordleBot said my choice was “terrific” and that it cut my answers list to 13; its choice, POLED, would have left only seven though.
I came up with quite a few of those 13, including FOLLY, JOLLY, HOLLY, GOLLY, LOLLY and MOLLY, although I remembered (for once) that FOLLY had been a past Wordle answer (game #751 and itself a high score of 4.7). I also had LOWLY, LOOPY, JOWLY and WOOLY, but forgot about COYLY (another past answer, as it happens), FOLKY and LOBBY.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that LOWLY had also appeared before – game #285 early on in Wordle’s life. But I might have played it anyway, because it was a good choice to further narrow down those options. By confirming that there were two Ls to be found, and ruling out the W, I cut my 13-strong shortlist to five.
These were now obvious – it was the -OLLY words, minus the now-ruled-out LOLLY. But really there were four, because I’d also dismissed FOLLY (though WordleBot hadn’t; I’m not sure why it doesn’t remember past answers).
I didn’t have enough guesses left to take a stab at it, so instead played MIGHT; this would guarantee me a solve in 5/6, and so it proved. None of the letters changed color, which meant the answer had to be JOLLY on one of Wordle’s toughest days ever.
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 #1037, Sunday 21 April: JOLLY
- Wordle #1036, Saturday 20 April: LUCID
- Wordle #1035, Friday 19 April: RAISE
- Wordle #1034, Thursday 18 April: FACET
- Wordle #1033, Wednesday 17 April: TITHE
- Wordle #1032, Tuesday 16 April: SHANK
- Wordle #1031, Monday 15 April: EQUIP
- Wordle #1030, Sunday 14 April: BLIMP
- Wordle #1029, Saturday 13 April: STEEL
- Wordle #1028, Friday 12 April: WHINY
- Wordle #1027, Thursday 11 April: LOUSE
- Wordle #1026, Wednesday 10 April: BROTH
- Wordle #1025, Tuesday 9 April: MERGE
- Wordle #1024, Monday 8 April: BREED
- Wordle #1023, Sunday 7 April: VOILA
- Wordle #1022, Saturday 6 April: FINCH
- Wordle #1021, Friday 5 April: WRIST
- Wordle #1020, Thursday 4 April: CLIMB
- Wordle #1019, Wednesday 3 April: PLAIT
- Wordle #1018, Tuesday 2 April: SERUM
- Wordle #1017, Monday 1 April: FROND
- Wordle #1016, Sunday 31 March: TABOO
- Wordle #1015, Saturday 30 March: FORCE
- Wordle #1014, Friday 29 March: REALM
- Wordle #1013, Thursday 28 March: SPEAK
- Wordle #1012, Wednesday 27 March: STUNG
- Wordle #1011, Tuesday 26 March: MAYOR
- Wordle #1010, Monday 25 March: SALLY
- Wordle #1009, Sunday 24 March: TOWEL
- Wordle #1008, Saturday 23 March: RISEN
- Wordle #1007, Friday 22 March: DECAY
- 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
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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