It’s time for your daily round of Wordle hints, expertly crafted to help you keep your streak going even on the toughest of days.
You might think that you don’t need any clues for Wordle today, but remember: failure in this game is only ever six guesses away.
Below, you’ll find a selection of Wordle hints to guide you in the right direction. You don’t have to use them all, but there are five in total should you need them, covering vowels, starting letter, ending letter and more. And if you don’t have time to play at all, you can see the answer, too.
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: Wordle hints and today’s answer are below, so don’t read on if you don’t want to see them.
Wordle hints (game #861) – 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 #861) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is M.
M is a middling letter when it comes to starting a word. It sits 10th in the rankings, with 107 occurrences in the 2,309 answers.
Wordle hints (game #861) – 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 #861) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is N.
N is a pretty common ending letter in Wordle: it’s the seventh most likely in that position and features in 130 solutions.
Wordle hints (game #861) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #861.
- Today’s Wordle answer is a builder.
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 #861)
Today’s Wordle answer (game #861) is… MASON.
With 2,309 answers in Wordle’s original solutions list, not every word can be an interesting one – and today’s really isn’t. PIQUE, a couple of days ago, certainly was. RETRY, TEMPO, SMIRK, OCCUR, SPLAT, KNELT… all have interesting aspects to them, be they repeated or uncommon letters, or unusual structures. MASON sadly doesn’t have any of those and is therefore rather a mundane puzzle.
Am I being unfair? No! This is the classic – read ‘dull’ – format of consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel-consonant. All five letters are fairly common, with M the least regular visitor to an answer out of them, but even that is smack bang in the middle of the rankings, at 13th overall.
It’s a filler word, and that’s all there is to it.
And yes, I’m also being hard on it because yet again I could only score a 4/6 despite the average today, according to WordleBot, being a mere 3.7. And for the second game in succession I lost a 50/50 on the third guess. I’m done with this game (not really).
How did the best Wordle starting words fare? There was quite a split here, mainly based around whether they contained an S or not. SLATE, WordleBot’s favorite, left 19 possible answers, as did STALE. SLANT left nine. SAINT left three. But at the other end of the scale there was also TRACE with 183 and TRICE with 393…
STARE left me with 22, so not too bad. With two yellows, I decided to try the repeat-at-least-one-of-them strategy that sometimes pays dividends, going for NASAL. On the plus side, this will often turn the yellows green; on the minus side, it does give you fewer chances to add new letters into the mix.
It worked pretty well, giving me -AS– and also a yellow N. That could only go in the final two positions, so I had -ASN- or -AS-N. I couldn’t see any possibilities for the former, but the latter gave me MASON or BASIN – so, yes, another 50/50.
Yesterday I had to choose between CLONE and NOBLE, and guessed wrong. Today, history repeated itself – I went with BASIN but had to settle for another 4/6. Pah!
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #860)
In a different time zone where it’s still Friday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #860, 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 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 #860.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer has illustrious qualities.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #860)
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #860) was… NOBLE.
Sometimes it’s just not your day and there’s very little you can do about it. WordleBot, the NYT’s AI helper tool, told me that I completed today’s game with a skill score of 99/99; I didn’t put a foot wrong, apparently. However, my luck score was just 43 and I needed four guesses to solve it, on a day when the average was 3.8. I’ll be sure to avoid walking under any ladders today.
Clearly some people enjoyed better fortune here, because 3.8 is the second-lowest score we’ve had all week. And really, it shouldn’t be a difficult one. I certainly don’t foresee many failures here.
NOBLE contains four of the 10 most common letters in the game, with B the only outlier; it’s only the 18th most common in general, and 16th in the middle of a word. And, if you started your game with CLONE or LANCE, you’ll have had a guaranteed 2/6 score today, because each left just one possible answer. Others among the best Wordle starting words also fared well, with PLANE leaving three solutions and CRONE a mere two.
My choice, STARE, was a lot less helpful; I had only a single green E to work with, and 106 answers to wade through. That’s the exact same scenario I faced with PIQUE yesterday, and as with that game I followed up with LINGO. Also as with yesterday’s puzzle, that worked very well, cutting the options on this occasion to two (it was three yesterday). And also as with yesterday’s Wordle, it took me another two guesses to actually find the solution.
With yellow N, O and L all appearing after that second guess, and with E already confirmed at the end, I had four of the five letters and surely would solve it in three. But no, on closer inspection I realized the answer could be either CLONE or NOBLE. I couldn’t recall either having been a past Wordle answer (and I was right; neither had), so I had a straight 50/50.
What to do? Well, mathematically both were equally likely. And linguistically there was nothing much between them either – neither is an uncommon word. It really was just a pure guess with random chance determining whether I was right or not. In the end I went with CLONE, because I know it’s a common start word and therefore if it were right the average score for the day would be very low, and I wanted to beat that average score! But I was wrong, meaning the average for the day was slightly higher – but I still finished below it. That’s just the way it goes sometimes…
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 #860, Friday 27 October: NOBLE
- Wordle #859, Thursday 26 October: PIQUE
- Wordle #858, Wednesday 25 October: RETRY
- Wordle #857, Tuesday 24 October: CAUSE
- Wordle #856, Monday 23 October: TEMPO
- Wordle #855, Sunday 22 October: GIVEN
- Wordle #854, Saturday 21 October: SMIRK
- Wordle #853, Friday 20 October: OCCUR
- Wordle #852, Thursday 19 October: SPLAT
- Wordle #851, Wednesday 18 October: MERCY
- Wordle #850, Tuesday 17 October: ADULT
- Wordle #849, Monday 16 October: GRAPH
- Wordle #848, Sunday 15 October: LEAKY
- Wordle #847, Saturday 14 October: AGENT
- Wordle #846, Friday 13 October: UNCLE
- Wordle #845, Thursday 12 October: KNELT
- Wordle #844, Wednesday 11 October: SKUNK
- Wordle #843, Tuesday 10 October: SNAIL
- Wordle #842, Monday 9 October: TRUTH
- Wordle #841, Sunday 8 October: BINGE
- Wordle #840, Saturday 7 October: VIOLA
- Wordle #839, Friday 6 October: CHIME
- Wordle #838, Thursday 5 October: BUNCH
- Wordle #837, Wednesday 4 October: SPURT
- Wordle #836, Tuesday 3 October: WHILE
- Wordle #835, Monday 2 October: MERRY
- Wordle #834, Sunday 1 October: BERET
- Wordle #833, Saturday 30 September: DADDY
- Wordle #832, Friday 29 September: AZURE
- Wordle #831, Thursday 28 September: COACH
- Wordle #830, Wednesday 27 September: SMILE
- Wordle #829, Tuesday 26 September: LOYAL
- Wordle #828, Monday 25 September: ROCKY
- Wordle #827, Sunday 24 September: RIGHT
- Wordle #826, Saturday 23 September: CAROL
- Wordle #825, Friday 22 September: BRUSH
- Wordle #824, Thursday 21 September: STONE
- Wordle #823, Wednesday 20 September: SNARE
- Wordle #822, Tuesday 19 September: CLOSE
- Wordle #821, Monday 18 September: FRANK
- Wordle #820, Sunday 17 September: MUSIC
- Wordle #819, Saturday 16 September: ANGEL
- Wordle #818, Friday 15 September: EXERT
- Wordle #817, Thursday 14 September: RAYON
- Wordle #816, Wednesday 13 September: CLEAR
- Wordle #815, Tuesday 12 September: WHISK
- Wordle #814, Monday 11 September: OLDER
- Wordle #813, Sunday 10 September: QUOTE
- Wordle #812, Saturday 9 September: LUCKY
- Wordle #811, Friday 8 September: ROUSE
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 2023.
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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