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? TechRadar's Quordle today page contains hints and answers for that game, and you can also take a look at our NYT Strands today and NYT Connections today pages for our verdict on two of the New York Times' other brainteasers.
SPOILER WARNING: Today's Wordle answer and hints are below, so don't read on if you don't want to see them.
Marc is TechRadar’s Global Editor in Chief and has been obsessed with Wordle for more than three years. He's authored dozens of articles on the game for TechRadar and its sister site Tom's Guide, including a detailed analysis of the most common letters in Wordle in every position and a guide to the best Wordle start words. He's also played every Wordle ever and only lost once and yes, he takes it all too seriously.
Wordle hints (game #1341) - 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 #1341) - 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 #1341) - 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 #1341) - 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 #1341) - clue #5 - last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here's an extra one for game #1341.
- Today's Wordle answer is extremely or wildly.
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 #1341)
- NYT average score: 4.5
- My score: 4
- WordleBot's score: 3
- My start word performance: FUSSY (300 remaining answers)
- WordleBot's start word performance: CRANE (187)
Today's Wordle answer (game #1341) is… MADLY.
Here's yet another difficult Wordle for you to sink your teeth into. MADLY currently has an average score of 4.5 – which implies it's super-tough to solve.
In reality, it is – and it isn't. There's nothing fundamentally complicated about it; no repeated or uncommon letters, and it's not an obscure word or anything like that. But it does have a few near-neighbor words in the form of BADLY, SADLY and MANLY. Plus, there are several others that have a similar format with the D, but with some letters misplaced – for instance DAILY, DALLY, LADDY and BALDY.
I got really lucky with my start word today. Yesterday, LOBBY had featured a repeated letter and a Y at the end and was useless. Today, FUSSY gave me the green Y that I wanted.
It still left me with 300 options, mind you, but I followed up with TRAIL – the answer from a few days ago – and that narrowed it down to 18. Leaving out the Y was a deliberate move; I wanted to see if this was an LY word, or maybe an RY word (WORRY, CARRY), TY word (WITTY, PATTY) or even RTY word (WARTY, DIRTY).
My first hunch proved correct; the L turned yellow, the R and T did not. I got a yellow A, too, so was able to start assembling a shortlist.
I didn't come up with all 18, but found around a dozen: LANKY, MANLY, APPLY, ALLAY, ALLOY, DELAY, BADLY, MADLY and DALLY among them. BALED was designed to narrow those down, and for the second day in a row I got lucky. It gave me the yellow D, yellow L and gray E that left MADLY as the only answer, so I notched up another four.
How did you do today? Send me an email or let me know in the comments.
Yesterday's Wordle hints (game #1340)
In a different time zone where it's still Tuesday? Don't worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1340, too.
- Wordle yesterday had 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).
- The first letter in yesterday's Wordle answer was I.
I is only the 19th most common starting letter in Wordle, and just 34 of the original 2,309 answers begin with it.
- 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 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 #1340.
- Yesterday's Wordle answer is not mainstream.
Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #1340)
- NYT average score: 4.1
- My score: 4
- WordleBot's score: 3
- My start word performance: LOBBY (1,156 remaining answers)
- WordleBot's start word performance: CRANE (24)
Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #1340) was… INDIE.
Welcome, dear readers, to the latest edition of 'The NYT just added a non-original answer into Wordle and it's a difficult one!'
Yes, INDIE is one of those words, the ones that aren't in the original 2,315-strong list compiled by the game's creator Josh Wardle back in the days before anyone knew what a streak was, before WordleBot was born, before five-letter words even existed (I might be exaggerating on that last one).
It's the 13th such extra word, joining a hall of fame that began with GUANO and SNAFU, then took in BALSA, KAZOO, LASER, PIOUS, BEAUT, MOMMY, PRIMP, UVULA, ATLAS, SQUID and FALSE.
And if you think these additions are ramping up, you'd be right: we had seven in the 550-odd games between GUANO and MOMMY, but the next six have come in fewer than 100 days. The NYT knows that Wordle is steadily running out of words and is seeking to keep it alive as long as it can.
Or it's just random, I have no idea. Maybe few people other than me even care about this – you just want to play a word puzzle over breakfast or slouched on the couch late at night. That's understandable.
Anyway, it interests me, not least because these extra words tend to be harder than most. INDIE is not the worst of them, with an average score of 4.1 at the time of writing; KAZOO, at 5.1, was the most difficult so far. It's still relatively tough, though – particularly coming after the incredibly easy TRAIL on Monday.
It contains three vowels, which typically makes for a simpler solving task, but then that's offset by the fact that two of them are repeated. What's more, 'I' is a very unlikely letter to be repeated – only 24 of the 2,000-plus original answers list have more than one of that letter (although INDIE is of course not on that original list).
It won't have been too tricky if you began with AUDIO, admittedly, as that left only three possible solutions; ADIEU, at 20, was also pretty helpful. What did I play? Well, LOBBY. Yeah, that was not such a success! In fact, it left me with 1,156 options, a number which might as well be meaningless given that obviously I didn't try to find any of them.
What I did do was work out which were the most common remaining letters, and with that in mind I played TRACE. I could have gone for CRANE or STARE, but they seemed a little too obvious. TRACE worked well enough – and was in fact what WordleBot said it would also have played. It was unlucky, though, and still left 46 words.
With a three now very unlikely, my goal was to find the right narrowing-down word. After much deliberation, I decided that should be SNIPE; no word could possibly guarantee me a four, but with a little luck it might give me the letters I needed.
And it did: the N turned green and the I yellow, and much to my surprise that left INDIE as the only possible solution. I played that next for my four.
Wordle answers: The past 50
I've been playing Wordle every day for more than three 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 #1340, Tuesday 18 February: INDIE
- Wordle #1339, Monday 17 February: TRAIL
- Wordle #1338, Sunday 16 February: SUAVE
- Wordle #1337, Saturday 15 February: CROOK
- Wordle #1336, Friday 14 February: DITTY
- Wordle #1335, Thursday 13 February: RUMBA
- Wordle #1334, Wednesday 12 February: RAPID
- Wordle #1333, Tuesday 11 February: SCORE
- Wordle #1332, Monday 10 February: GOODY
- Wordle #1331, Sunday 9 February: BONUS
- Wordle #1330, Saturday 8 February: STEEP
- Wordle #1329, Friday 7 February: SWATH
- Wordle #1328, Thursday 6 February: PUPIL
- Wordle #1327, Wednesday 5 February: PEDAL
- Wordle #1326, Tuesday 4 February: TOOTH
- Wordle #1325, Monday 3 February: REVUE
- Wordle #1324, Sunday 2 February: CHORE
- Wordle #1323, Saturday 1 February: RIVET
- Wordle #1322, Friday 31 January: TOAST
- Wordle #1321, Thursday 30 January: FALSE
- Wordle #1320, Wednesday 29 January: UDDER
- Wordle #1319, Tuesday 28 January: FEVER
- Wordle #1318, Monday 27 January: SHUNT
- Wordle #1317, Sunday 26 January: SUNNY
- Wordle #1316, Saturday 25 January: CRISP
- Wordle #1315, Friday 24 January: CREPE
- Wordle #1314, Thursday 23 January: UPPER
- Wordle #1313, Wedneday 22 January: REACH
- Wordle #1312, Tuesday 21 January: ICING
- Wordle #1311, Monday 20 January: SQUID
- Wordle #1310, Sunday 19 January: ROWER
- Wordle #1309, Saturday 18 January: SILLY
- Wordle #1308, Friday 17 January: PROSE
- Wordle #1307, Thursday 16 January: FLINT
- Wordle #1306, Wednesday 15 January: KNACK
- Wordle #1305, Tuesday 14 January: FANCY
- Wordle #1304, Monday 13 January: CLOAK
- Wordle #1303, Sunday 12 January: TOTAL
- Wordle #1302, Saturday 11 January: DINGY
- Wordle #1301, Friday 10 January: CRAWL
- Wordle #1300, Thursday 9 January: WAFER
- Wordle #1299, Wednesday 8 January: DRAFT
- Wordle #1298, Tuesday 7 January: ATLAS
- Wordle #1297, Monday 6 January: SPRIG
- Wordle #1296, Sunday 5 January: CYBER
- Wordle #1295, Saturday 4 January: RELAX
- Wordle #1294, Friday 3 January: CHEAP
- Wordle #1293, Thursday 2 January: CHOSE
- Wordle #1292, Wednesday 1 January: NERVE
- Wordle #1291, Tuesday 31 December: LEMUR
- Wordle #1290, Monday 30 December: STARE
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.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
