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 #968) – 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 #968) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is P.
P is a very common first letter among Wordle answers. It’s the fifth most common in the alphabet and begins 141 solutions in total.
Wordle hints (game #968) – 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 #968) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is A.
A is a relatively common ending letter. It ranks 10th in this regard and today’s game is one of 63 in which you’ll find an A there.
Wordle hints (game #968) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #968.
- Today’s Wordle answer is a popular food type.
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 #968)
Today’s Wordle answer (game #968) is… PASTA.
Repeated letters have been a feature of recent Wordles, with six of the past nine games including a matching pair. Half of these have been duplicate Es, which are easier to find because they’re so common. But today’s is the less-likely-to-appear-more-than-once A.
Admittedly, A is still fairly common as repeated letters go; it’s fourth behind L, O and the aforementioned E. However, these things are all relative, and there are still only 69 games in which A appears more than once. You certainly wouldn’t expect it to happen at the start of a Wordle.
Despite that, PASTA is not too tricky overall. WordleBot says it has an average score of 3.7, making it half a guess easier than yesterday’s rather challenging NEVER (see below).
That low-ish score is probably in large part due to the performance of some of the best Wordle starting words. SLATE left only six solutions and PLATE five, while a bunch of popular choices such as STARE (12), RAISE (23) and ORATE (also 23) were not far behind.
WordleBot said that my random opener, FILTH, was a lucky choice, but it didn’t feel that way, given that I still had 70 words to pick from. I didn’t take any great risks with my second guess, merely playing five of the most common letters still open to me, in the form of CRANE. This was a “good guess”, apparently, but it only uncovered one yellow letter and still left me with eight options.
At this stage I set about listing all the words that would fit. I came up with four: PASTY, TASTY, PATTY and TATTY, but missed QUOTA (fair enough), BATTY (maybe) and GOTTA (really?), plus the eventual answer, PASTA.
Based on the four words on my list, PASTY seemed like a good bet, because it didn’t repeat a letter whereas the others did. When the first four letters turned green I thought I’d got it, so I was little shocked when that last one stayed gray. I don’t think you’d need to be a genius to work out that PASTA was now the only answer, so I played that next for my 4/6.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #967)
In a different time zone where it’s still Sunday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #967, 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 N.
N is a surprisingly uncommon starting letter. Only 37 games begin with it and it ranks just 18th in this regard.
- 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 #967.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is not under any condition.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #967)
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #967) was… NEVER.
Friday’s game proved quite controversial, on account of its ED ending. Although there’s never been an official line on this, common wisdom has long held that past participles that end in ED aren’t Wordle answers, and it’s true that we hadn’t yet had one. But FRIED was one of Wordle’s original answers, and rightly or wrongly it has now appeared. Don’t be surprised if we see the likes of TRIED and CRIED in the future.
It’s also worth noting that the NYT says that ED ending was the reason for WordleBot’s rather odd analysis yesterday – it simply didn’t expect FRIED to be an answer, so its ratings got all messed up. But now that we’ve had one it should learn from that mistake and not get confused next time.
Anyway, back to today’s game. NEVER is a rather difficult Wordle in its own right, with an average score of 4.2. The two Es are part of the problem, with the uncommon V another factor. The similarity to NEWER, FEVER, LEVER, UNDER, RENEW and a few other words won’t have helped, either, and for a quadruple whammy there’s the fact that very few of the best Wordle starting words were much use.
My random starter was RASPY, which WordleBot said was “a strong opening guess,” but an unlucky one – and indeed it was, because it left 333 possible solutions. Those of you playing TRACE (170), SLATE (328) or STARE (185) won’t have been much better off, but there were a few decent options including CRANE (33), SNARE (26) and SANER (7).
I wanted to place my yellow R, so put it in position #2, where it’s most common. I needed a vowel, so added I and E, and with the addition of T and C created TRICE. This was a “terrific choice,” WordleBot said, but again unlucky – it still left 45 words.
Worse still, I now suspected this was to be a dreaded ER word – which indeed it was. So there’s your fifth reason why this is a difficult Wordle.
I wanted to confirm that pattern as soon as possible, so played LONER, and finally made some progress: the E and R turned green and a yellow N was also added into the mix. WordleBot said I now had three words left, and I’d come to the same conclusion: NEWER, NEVER and UNDER.
I now know that UNDER was a past Wordle answer (back in March 2023), but didn’t remember that at the time, so in my head I had a one-in-three chance. Guessing one of NEWER or NEVER made sense, because if I was wrong I’d know for sure what the actual solution was, whereas guessing UNDER would have left me with a 50/50.
There was no particular reason to favor one over the other, but I decided to choose NEVER and was rewarded with an average-beating, WordleBot-equaling 4/6.
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 #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
- Wordle #955, Tuesday 30 January: EXPEL
- Wordle #954, Monday 29 January: LEGGY
- Wordle #953, Sunday 28 January: EMBER
- 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
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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