NYT Wordle today — answer and hints for game #1090, Thursday, June 13
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 NYT Strands today and NYT Connections today pages for my verdict on two of the New York Times’ other brainteasers.
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 #1090) – clue #1 – Vowels
How many vowels does today’s Wordle have?
• Wordle today has 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).
Wordle hints (game #1090) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is A.
A is a reasonably common starting letter in Wordle: 140 games begin with this letter. It ranks 6th among starting letters, behind S, C, B, T and P.
Wordle hints (game #1090) – 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 #1090) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is T.
T is a very common letter to end a Wordle answer – in fact only E and Y are more likely in that position.
Wordle hints (game #1090) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1090.
- Today’s Wordle answer is a feeling of anxiety.
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 #1090)
- NYT average score: 4.0
- My score: 3
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- Best start word performance*: SAINT (1 remaining answer)
- My start word performance: STAMP (20)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1090) is… ANGST.
ANGST is a rare beast among Wordle answers, in that it contains four consonants in a row. How rare is it? Well, 12 of the original 2,309 solutions contain five consonants, with no vowel at all. Or rather, they all contain a Y instead, which acts as a vowel in them. But let’s include those 12. Then, on top of that, there are a further 18 answers that have a vowel at the start followed by four consonants, or vice-versa. So that’s 30 games in total that contain four (or five) consonants in a row, out of 2,309. That’s a mere 1.3% of all games. So yes, it’s rare.
Does that add to the difficulty today? Well, to an extent. The average score, according to WordleBot, is 4.0 – so a teeny tiny bit above the norm for the game, which currently sits at around 3.96. However, a couple of popular start words cut the answers list down considerably today, which implies that some people will have got nice low scores today – and in turn that others will have been far higher. So it’s most likely one of those games were there’ll be a split between the haves and have-nots.
On that start word front, SLATE, usually the fourth or fifth most popular, left only seven solutions. STARE, which is third, was at 12. ARISE, another common choice, was also at seven. I was only a little behind that, with STAMP leaving me with 20 options.
I made slightly hard work of that decent start. I knew that S and T are very common together at the end of an answer, but figured that because the A couldn’t go in the middle, an –AST word was impossible, and therefore on this occasion an ST answer was unlikely. Good reasoning, sure, but completely wrong as it happens. Instead, I decided the ST and were likely in positions #3 and #4, followed by a Y – as in HASTY, TASTY and NASTY, or maybe there was an E at the end for HASTE. I had a couple of others, including TASER and VISTA, but missed a whole bunch.
I decided to play HASTY, based on the words I had identified, and made decent progress: all three letters stayed yellow, but I ruled out lots of words and now only had four left. However, I only found two: ANGST and ASCOT, and I knew that the latter had been a past Wordle answer (game #971) – so in my head, there was now only one answer left.
In WordleBot’s head, however, there were two more: ASTER and ASTIR. Anyone ever heard of them? I haven’t, so I’m going to assume they aren’t real solutions. Instead, I played ANGST with the feeling that it had to be the answer, and it turned out I was right.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1089)
In a different time zone where it’s still Wednesday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1089, 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 D.
D is the ninth most common starting letter in the game, so maybe slightly less likely than you might expect.
- 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 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.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here’s an extra one for game #1089.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is to discourage.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1089)
- NYT average score: 4.2
- My score: 3
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- Best start word performance*: TRADE (1 remaining answer)
- My start word performance: LODGE (203)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1089) was… DETER.
Question: what’s worse than an ER word? Answer: an ER word containing a repeated letter, of course!
Want proof? Here goes. The overall average for the game, based on every puzzle for which we have a WordleBot score (which currently stands at 801), is 3.962. So far, there have been 45 ER words among those 801, and the average for those is 4.358. But among ER words that also have a repeat – of which there have now been 15 – the average is a mighty 4.642.
So there you have it: the combo of an ER ending a repeated letter adds more than a half guess on to the average score, and tips a Wordle over from being straightforward to being rather difficult.
DETER is far from the hardest of these, given that it has an average of 4.2, whereas ROVER in April was at 5.0 and PIPER in February was 5.2. And indeed, it’s not even as high as Monday’s SWUNG (4.4) or Sunday’s MANGA (a whopping 4.8). But it is undeniably tough.
On the plus side, the repeated letter is an E – and as my analysis of every Wordle answers shows, that’s by far the most likely one to appear twice in an answer. The fact that the other three letters are D, T and R will also have helped, particularly if your start word was TRADE, which left only a single solution.
But TRADE is not a particularly popular opener, so more likely is that your shortlist will actually have been a longlist: CRANE left 191 options, SLATE left 117. STARE was better, at 43, but that’s still a way off the single-figure totals that mark out an easy game.
My opener was in the same ballpark as CRANE, with LODGE leaving me with 203 possible solutions, despite the fact that I had two yellow letters. Fortunately, I spotted the pitfall ahead of me and managed to get home in three. Any time that an E turns yellow at the end of my first guess I play for an ER word (unless the R is ruled out, of course), because if I do have to solve one I want as many attempts at it as possible.
So with that in mind I played DINER next, reasoning that if the R didn’t turn green then maybe the N would be at the end instead. I suspected that the D wouldn’t be there, because ED words are not generally included among Wordle answers (though there have been some exceptions, such as FRIED).
As it happened, the D, E and R all turned green, instantly cutting my word list from 200-plus to a mere four: DETER, DRYER, DEFER and DATER. And the really good news was that I could now guarantee a 4/6 by playing DETER. Why? Well, if the E turned green but the T didn’t, it would have to be DEFER. If the T turned green without the E, it would be DATER. If neither changed colour, it would be DRYER. Playing any of the other three would not guarantee that four, because it would potentially still leave me a 50/50, or even a three-way split if I’d played DRYER.
So, it made sense to play DETER anyway, and as luck would have it I didn’t need to worry about guaranteeing a four – because both the E and T turned green, meaning I scored a three.
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 #1089, Wednesday 12 June: DETER
- Wordle #1088, Tuesday 11 June: SWUNG
- Wordle #1087, Monday 10 June: MANGA
- Wordle #1086, Sunday 9 June: CROWD
- Wordle #1085, Saturday 8 June: HENCE
- Wordle #1084, Friday 7 June: MELON
- Wordle #1083, Thursday 6 June: ETHER
- Wordle #1082, Wednesday 5 June: ORGAN
- Wordle #1081, Tuesday 4 June: GROOM
- Wordle #1080, Monday 3 June: STARK
- Wordle #1079, Sunday 2 June: BRAVO
- Wordle #1078, Saturday 1 June: BASIN
- Wordle #1077, Friday 31 May: CHAOS
- Wordle #1076, Thursday 30 May: GUMMY
- Wordle #1075, Wednesday 29 May: PAPAL
- Wordle #1074, Tuesday 28 May: MINUS
- Wordle #1073, Monday 27 May: SKIER
- Wordle #1072, Sunday 26 May: BEVEL
- Wordle #1071, Saturday 25 May: TITAN
- Wordle #1070, Friday 24 May: GLIDE
- Wordle #1069, Thursday 23 May: SWISH
- Wordle #1068, Wednesday 22 May: EXALT
- Wordle #1067, Tuesday 21 May: DINGO
- Wordle #1066, Monday 20 May: NICER
- Wordle #1065, Sunday 19 May: HITCH
- Wordle #1064, Saturday 18 May: BRINY
- Wordle #1063, Friday 17 May: TUTOR
- Wordle #1062, Thursday 16 May: STALL
- Wordle #1061, Wednesday 15 May: PINCH
- Wordle #1060, Tuesday 14 May: AMASS
- Wordle #1059, Monday 13 May: CUMIN
- Wordle #1058, Sunday 12 May: OUTER
- Wordle #1057, Saturday 11 May: TIDAL
- Wordle #1056, Friday 10 May: MEDIA
- Wordle #1055, Thursday 9 May: JERKY
- Wordle #1054, Wednesday 8 May: PIOUS
- Wordle #1053, Tuesday 7 May: MUSTY
- Wordle #1052, Monday 6 May: SHAVE
- Wordle #1051, Sunday 5 May: DECAL
- Wordle #1050, Saturday 4 May: VALUE
- Wordle #1049, Friday 3 May: EBONY
- Wordle #1048, Thursday 2 May: SLICE
- Wordle #1047, Wednesday 1 May: DIARY
- Wordle #1046, Tuesday 30 April: PROWL
- Wordle #1045, Monday 29 April: CRAFT
- Wordle #1044, Sunday 28 April: PRUNE
- Wordle #1043, Saturday 27 April: GLEAM
- Wordle #1042, Friday 26 April: VAPID
- Wordle #1041, Thursday 25 April: INTRO
- Wordle #1040, Wednesday 24 April: OVERT
- Wordle #1039, Tuesday 23 April: ROVER
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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