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 #862) – 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 #862) – 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 #862) – 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 #862) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is Y.
Y is the second most common ending letter in the game, behind only E. In total, 364 Wordle answers end with a Y.
Wordle hints (game #862) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #862.
- Today’s Wordle answer is not genuine.
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 #862)
Today’s Wordle answer (game #862) is… PHONY.
I’m somewhat surprised that people appear to be finding today’s Wordle to be relatively easy; WordleBot says it’s being solved it in an average of 3.6 guesses, which makes it simpler than yesterday’s MASON (3.7) and Friday’s NOBLE (3.8). And that’s despite the fact that unlike those games, it does have a couple of slightly less common letters and a less common format that only uses one vowel.
What’s going on? Well, my guess is that it’s a word that doesn’t have many similarly spelled alternatives, and that therefore people will have had quite a small number of options for their third guesses.
It’s certainly not the result of many of the best Wordle starting words giving people a good opening guess. Of WordleBot’s top 20, only CRONE (which left nine options), PLANE (six) and CLONE (10) cut down the possible answers list by many.
STARE, my first guess, drew a blank and left a massive 319 options for me. Not good. I tend to play CLOUD after a failure on the opening go, and today that worked reasonably well, giving me a green O in the middle of the word and leaving me with 12 solutions.
I didn’t know that at the time, of course – WordleBot only shares that info after the game – so spent some time looking for words it could be, and came up with only five: KNOWN, WHOOP, GOOFY, WOOZY and BOOZY.
That’s not a particularly good return, admittedly, but in my defence some of the options WordleBot considered seem unlikely to be actual answers; it also had KOOKY, BOOBY, HOOKY, GOOPY, POOFY, WHOMP and the actual answer, PHONY.
I nearly guessed KNOWN at this stage – it seemed by far the most likely to be an actual answer – but ultimately decided to narrow it down a bit further. To do this, I played NYMPH – a really handy word in these situations, because it doesn’t waste a letter on a vowel (O was the only one in my list, and I already knew about it).
NYMPH worked better than I could ever have imagined, giving me four yellow letters. Coupled with the green O, that meant I now had a simple anagram to solve. It didn’t take me long to establish that PHONY was the solution, so I played that next for a 4/6.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #861)
In a different time zone where it’s still Saturday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #861, 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 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.
- 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 N.
N is a pretty common ending letter in Wordle: it’s the seventh most likely in that position and features in 130 solutions.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here’s an extra one for game #861.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is a builder.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #861)
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #861) was… MASON.
With 2,309 answers in Wordle’s original solutions list, not every word can be an interesting one – and this one 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, 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.
On Friday I had to choose between CLONE and NOBLE, and guessed wrong. Here, history repeated itself – I went with BASIN but had to settle for another 4/6. Pah!
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 #861, Saturday 28 October: MASON
- 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
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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