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 #953) – 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 #953) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is 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.
Wordle hints (game #953) – clue #3 – repeated letters
Does today’s Wordle have any repeated letters?
• There are 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 #953) – 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 #953) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #953.
- Today’s Wordle answer is a glowing fragment.
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 #953)
Today’s Wordle answer (game #953) is… EMBER.
Fancy a really difficult Wordle? You got it! Today’s puzzle has an average score of 4.7, according to WordleBot, making it the toughest game of 2024 so far. In fact, it’s the hardest we’ve faced for 77 days, since the truly horrible SASSY (5.0) on November 14, 2023.
EMBER isn’t quite up there with SASSY, but 4.7 is still a really high score, particularly in the context of people generally getting so much better at solving Wordle quickly. Only 22 games, out of more than 540 that I have scores for, have been harder.
What’s the problem? Well, there are three complicating factors. One is not necessarily a big issue – there’s a repeated E. Any repeated letter tends to make the game more difficult, but against that E is by far the most likely letter to appear twice or more in a Wordle answer.
The second issue is connected to the first, in that one of those Es starts the word. No, that’s not incredibly rare, but E is a lot less likely to turn up there than it is elsewhere. Only 72 of Wordle’s original 2,309 solutions begin with an E, and it’s only the 14th most common in this position.
The biggest problem by far is that this is an ER word, and if you don’t hate these then you are either a masochist or much smarter than I am. There are just too many of them, and it’s always a nightmare trying to work out what the other three letters are. Plus, they’re usually in the format consonant-vowel-consonant, so the fact that the E was at the beginning today might have made it even harder to solve.
To make matters worse for many of you, the best Wordle starting words were close to useless today. Of the top 20, as ranked by WordleBot, the most successful was TASER, which left… wait for it… 105 possible solutions. Hmmmm.
Still, it could have been worse. My random word generator reached new levels of ineptitude today (or maybe it was just trying to make life even more difficult for me), serving up SPIKY. This would not be high up my list of good openers anyway due to the K, the lack of an E or A, and the absence of T, R or L – but today it was appallingly bad: 1,018 words could still have been the answer. I’m not sure I even know 1,018 five-letter words.
Still, my second guess was therefore quite simple, because I just played TRACE, the best starting word overall. This was a little more helpful in that it gave me a yellow E and a yellow R, but unfortunately that still left 62 answers.
It also gave me an inkling that this could indeed be an ER game, so I put that to the test on the next go and played OLDER. WordleBot loved this, and it did its job of confirming what kind of word it was. However, with no other letters changing color, I was still a little in the dark – and running out of guesses.
WordleBot said I now had eight options, and I had independently come up with seven of them: EMBER, FEVER, FEWER, NEWER, NEVER, QUEER and REFER; I missed UMBER.
I couldn’t work out a way to guarantee a 5/6 now – there were still too many letters in play. However, I spotted that FEWER would come closest: it would guarantee a 5/6 unless the answer was QUEER or EMBER, in which case I’d still have a 50/50.
That scenario is of course the one that played out, with the second E confirmed but nothing more. I could, therefore, have ended up with a 6/6 today, but I got a bit of luck at the end when I played EMBER and all five letters turned green. I never like scoring a 5/6, but today I don’t feel like I could have done much better.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #952)
In a different time zone where it’s still Saturday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #952, 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 #952.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is an animal or treacherous person.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #952)
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #952) was… SNAKE.
After a brief foray into slightly more difficult territory for yesterday’s ALOOF we’re firmly back on safe ground with SNAKE. It starts with the most common starting letter, ends with the most common ending letter, has the most common middle letter in the center, and has a comfortable average score of 3.7.
It does, however, present a certain amount of peril in terms of its format, which is one that’s found in many, many words. SNA-E can also lead to SNARE, S-AKE can also be SHAKE, SLAKE, STAKE and (possibly) SPAKE, and there’s also SNAKY if you change the E. If you change two letters things get far worse: SCALE and SHARE and STAVE and SLATE and SPACE and on and on.
With that in mind, I suspect today’s answer will be something of an opinion splitter, with lots of 2/6s and 3/6s but also plenty of 5s and even 6s. Much will probably depend on your choice of the best Wordle starting words, or – if you don’t use one – on how lucky you were.
My random opener was EXTOL, which was spectacularly unlucky, leaving me with a monumental 602 options to pick from. But at the other end of the scale, CRANE left only two and SNARE just one. Lots of other popular choices were in the teens at worst.
The fact that I still got home in three guesses was entirely down to my second guess, which was close to my finest ever moment as far as my predictive powers go. All I knew at this stage was that the answer contained an E somewhere other than at the start, that there was no X (well duh!) and that it didn’t contain a T, O or L.
Chances are the E would go at the end. There would probably be at least one more vowel, and that would be either A or I, rather than U. R, S and N were the three most common consonants not yet played, so I threw them into the mix too and decided to play SNARE.
And what a choice that was! Those 602 possible solutions were cut down not just to 10, or five, or even two, but to a single, solitary, all-on-its-own one: SNAKE. Thank you very much, Wordle gods.
Even I couldn’t miss an easy opportunity like this, so I played SNAKE next for a rollercoaster 3/6.
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 #952, Saturday 27 January: SNAKE
- Wordle #951, Friday 26 January: ALOOF
- Wordle #950, Thursday 25 January: BLOCK
- Wordle #949, Wednesday 24 January: RELIC
- Wordle #948, Tuesday 23 January: STILL
- Wordle #947, Monday 22 January: TWEAK
- Wordle #946, Sunday 21 January: NORTH
- Wordle #945, Saturday 20 January: LARGE
- Wordle #944, Friday 19 January: THING
- Wordle #943, Thursday 18 January: STOLE
- Wordle #942, Wednesday 17 January: COURT
- Wordle #941, Tuesday 16 January: BLOND
- Wordle #940, Monday 15 January: LUNCH
- Wordle #939, Sunday 14 January: DOING
- Wordle #938, Saturday 13 January: HEARD
- Wordle #937, Friday 12 January: ROUTE
- Wordle #936, Thursday 11 January: BRIEF
- Wordle #935, Wednesday 10 January: THREW
- Wordle #934, Tuesday 9 January: LINER
- Wordle #933, Monday 8 January: FINAL
- Wordle #932, Sunday 7 January: STONY
- Wordle #931, Saturday 6 January: CABLE
- Wordle #930, Friday 5 January: LUNGE
- Wordle #929, Thursday 4 January: SCANT
- Wordle #928, Wednesday 3 January: TWIRL
- Wordle #927, Tuesday 2 January: AGING
- Wordle #926, Monday 1 January: MURAL
- Wordle #925, Sunday 31 December: SALTY
- Wordle #924, Saturday 30 December: THREE
- Wordle #923, Friday 29 December: CHILD
- Wordle #922, Thursday 28 December: LEARN
- Wordle #921, Wednesday 27 December: DAISY
- Wordle #920, Tuesday 26 December: PHONE
- 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
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.
stereoguide-referencehometheater-techradar