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 #985) – clue #1 – Vowels
How many vowels does today’s Wordle have?
• Wordle today has vowels in three 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 #985) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is I.
I is only the 19th most common starting letter in Wordle, and just 34 of the original 2,309 answers begin with it.
Wordle hints (game #985) – 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 #985) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is 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.
Wordle hints (game #985) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #985.
- Today’s Wordle answer is a visual representation.
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 #985)
Today’s Wordle answer (game #985) is… IMAGE.
We don’t get that many Wordle words with three vowels, but when they do arrive they’re usually on the easier side of things. The previous example was ALIVE, on February 1, and that one had an average score of 3.6. IMAGE is seemingly harder than that, with a 3.8 average, but it’s still eminently solvable compared to some.
It’s not a word that the best Wordle starting words were particularly helpful for, with none of the top 20 dipping below 25. SLICE was the best of them – it left 26 answers – while TRICE (27), LEAST (28), STARE (29) and SNARE, STALE and SLATE (all 31) were just behind it.
CREME, my random starter, was better still – no doubt thanks to the inclusion of the letter M. With a green E also uncovered on that first guess, I now had only 23 words to choose from, so the fact that it took me another three attempts is a bit disappointing.
I came up with most of these 23, including MOVIE, MIDGE, MATTE, MAIZE, MAUVE and MANGE, plus AMPLE, AMBLE, MOOSE, MOUSE, SMILE, AMUSE, SMOTE and SMITE. Based on those, MOIST seemed a good guess; that M was very common at the start, and the other four letters were sprinkled liberally across the words.
WordleBot only deemed it a “solid” guess, but it performed well, giving me a yellow I and cutting the options down to a pair of words: IMAGE and IMBUE.
Unfortunately, I missed IMAGE completely. I’m not really sure how, because it’s a much more common word than IMBUE, but there you go. If I had spotted it, I’m certain I would have played it and scored a 3/6. But instead, I played IMBUE first, then realized my mistake and had to settle for a 4/6. Still, WordleBot could only match that, so it wasn’t a complete disaster.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #983)
In a different time zone where it’s still Wednesday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #984, 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 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 L.
L is a really common letter to find at the end of a Wordle. There are 155 games that finish with an L, and it ranks as the fifth most likely letter there.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here’s an extra one for game #984.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is an evil being.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #984)
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #984) was… DEVIL.
Wordle’s been throwing up some interesting solutions, recently – lots of repeated letters, or rarely used words – but DEVIL is about as unremarkable as they come. It’s not even so easy that it stands out in that regard – WordleBot says it has an average of 3.8.
There’s not a lot to dig into, really. D is the ninth most common starting letter, so not particularly good or bad in that regard. There’s a V, which is a fairly rare visitor to a Wordle answer, but nowhere near as uncommon as an X or a Q. L is quite likely to end an answer, but not right at the top of the list. E is quite likely to appear second, but again not the most likely. You get the idea.
In fact, probably the most notable thing about it is that it’s not very notable. Well, that and the fact that very few of the best Wordle starting words were much help. Only two of the top 20 dipped below 50 remaining answers, with LEAST leaving 26 and SLICE leaving 38.
For the second day in a row, my random start word was a complete bust; ABORT was what I was thinking when all five letters turned gray. Starting again wasn’t an option, of course, so I moved on to guess #2 and hoped for better luck – which I got via SLICE. I said above that it was one of the best starting words today, and it also proved a great choice on the second round, giving me yellow L, I and E, and cutting my options from 473 to 17.
A 3/6 was out of the question at this stage. Though I didn’t know there were 17 possibles, I’d come up with nine on my own: FIELD, YIELD, WIELD, LINEN, DEVIL, PIXEL, HELIX, LIKEN and IMPEL. That was too many for me to attempt a straight-out guess on the third attempt.
The interesting dilemma was whether an ED word was an option. As well as those nine words, I could see that LIKED, LIVED, LINED and IDLED were all possibles too. And indeed, all were on WordleBot’s list when I checked it post-game. ED words are generally not Wordle answers – but then again, a week or so ago we had FRIED, so maybe they were?
In the end I decided to play LINED, because it would cover off that possibility while also helping me make progress with some of the more likely words. And it worked: LINED gave me a yellow D, and though the other three all stayed yellow too, there were now only minimal ways in which they could all be arranged. In fact, once I started looking I realized DEVIL was the only word that fit, so played that next for a not-particularly-memorable 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 #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
- 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
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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