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 two 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 #1283) - 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 #1283) - clue #2 - first letter
What letter does today's Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today's Wordle answer is S.
S is the most common starting letter in the game, featuring in 365 of Wordle's 2,309 answers. In fact, it's almost twice as likely to begin an answer as the next most common starting letter, C.
Wordle hints (game #1283) - 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 #1283) - 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 #1283) - clue #5 - last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here's an extra one for game #1283.
- Today's Wordle answer is hot and steamy.
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 #1283)
- NYT average score: 3.7
- My score: 3
- WordleBot's score: 3
- Best start word performance*: SAINT (1 remaining answer)
- My start word performance: BRAND (30)
* From WordleBot's Top 20 start words
Today's Wordle answer (game #1283) is… SAUNA.
I'd love a nice SAUNA right now. It's dreary where I am just outside of London; rather than being a lovely winter wonderland, with snow on the ground and icicles dangling from branches, it's just cold, wet, dark and depressing. But hey, here's Wordle to cheer us all up!
And it did cheer me up today, mainly because I scored a three that owed a lot to luck and not much to skill – a real festive gift for me.
SAUNA is potentially quite difficult, what with its repeated letter A, but it shouldn't have been a nightmare before Christmas so long as you played sensibly. WordleBot says it has an average score of 3.7, and it doesn't feature the too-many-answers problem that beset BLADE and BRAWN (to an extent) over the weekend.
The S at the start will have made things easier for many, too; if you began with SLATE you'll have had only 22 words to choose from, while STARE was at 24.
My opener was BRAND – which would have been incredibly fortunate yesterday, but which was slightly less so today. Still, it cut the shortlist to 30 and put me on the path to success.
With a green N in the fourth slot, and a yellow A before it, I had a good idea of the kind of word formats to focus on. One was the nasty -AUNT trap, with HAUNT, TAUNT, GAUNT, VAUNT and JAUNT, another the -AINT variant (PAINT, TAINT, SAINT, FAINT). An ING ending was also possible; AGING, AXING, APING and ACING all made my list.
I definitely wanted I and G in there to cover that, plus a T for the AUNT/AINT words. S was a common extra, so I played GAITS and got lucky – it cut my 30-strong pool of words to a single choice, SAUNA. That didn't seem likely at first, given that all it did was turn the A green and the S yellow, but once I began looking it was clear that it was the only word that fit. I played it next for a trouble-free 3/6.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday's Wordle hints (game #1282)
In a different time zone where it's still Sunday? Don't worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1282, too.
- Wordle yesterday had 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).
- The first letter in yesterday's Wordle answer was B.
B is a very, very common starting letter in Wordle. In fact, it's the third most common overall, behind only S and C.
- 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 #1282.
- Yesterday's Wordle answer is strength.
Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #1282)
- NYT average score: 4.0
- My score: 4
- WordleBot's score: 3
- Best start word performance*: CRANE (7 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: DRYER (130)
* From WordleBot's Top 20 start words
Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #1282) was… BRAWN.
BRAWN is one of those words that looks innocuous enough, but that contains a few complications. WordleBot says it has an average score of 4.0 – the same as yesterday's BLADE – but that's despite the performance of CRANE, which left only seven answers.
CRANE is the best Wordle starting word of all, according to the 'bot at least, and is played by around 2-3% of people daily. Those lucky souls will probably have scored a three today, so long as they didn't fall into one of this game's traps.
The obvious one is the presence of W, a very uncommon letter in the game, but really the main problem is that the W is not an I, to make BRAIN. That's a far more obvious word than BRAWN, and it was played by 4% of all Wordlers on the second guess today (against 2% who went with the actual answer). On the third guess, BRAWN did take the lead with 19%, but 8% still went with BRAIN. DRAWN, PRAWN, BRAWL and BRAND also all garnered lots of attention today.
I made the BRAIN mistake myself, and in a sense it was a mistake, because anyone with a decent memory will recall that it was a past Wordle answer, and as recently as September of this year to boot (game #1,197). Unfortunately, the older I get the harder it is to remember much more than to eat my lunch each day.
That was the difference between a three and a four for me, although in fairness I did have a three-way choice between BRAIN, BRAWN and GRAIN – and might well have gone with the latter anyway. That hasn't yet appeared in Wordle, so consulting an answers list would still have left me with a 50/50 and quite probably with a four anyway. Still, that's the average today, so I'm not too unhappy.
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 #1282, Sunday 22 December: BRAWN
- Wordle #1281, Saturday 21 December: BLADE
- Wordle #1280, Friday 20 December: FLASH
- Wordle #1279, Thursday 19 December: STRAY
- Wordle #1278, Wednesday 18 December: HEFTY
- Wordle #1277, Tuesday 17 December: SCOWL
- Wordle #1276, Monday 16 December: BOAST
- Wordle #1275, Sunday 15 December: FUNKY
- Wordle #1274, Saturday 14 December: DROOL
- Wordle #1273, Friday 13 December: BOXER
- Wordle #1272, Thursday 12 December: VYING
- Wordle #1271, Wednesday 11 December: PLUMB
- Wordle #1270, Tuesday 10 December: PATIO
- Wordle #1269, Monday 9 December: FLUNG
- Wordle #1268, Sunday 8 December: HYENA
- Wordle #1267, Saturday 7 December: HILLY
- Wordle #1266, Friday 6 December: SHOVE
- Wordle #1265, Thursday 5 December: ENDOW
- Wordle #1264, Wednesday 4 December: CRYPT
- Wordle #1263, Tuesday 3 December: SHAKY
- Wordle #1262, Monday 2 December: GUILE
- Wordle #1261, Sunday 1 December: MAUVE
- Wordle #1260, Saturday 30 November: DOGMA
- Wordle #1259, Friday 29 November: HIPPO
- Wordle #1258, Thursday 28 November: CHOCK
- Wordle #1257, Wednesday 27 November: SLANG
- Wordle #1256, Tuesday 26 November: WITCH
- Wordle #1255, Monday 25 November: BROWN
- Wordle #1254, Sunday 24 November: TWIST
- Wordle #1253, Saturday 23 November: JELLY
- Wordle #1252, Friday 22 November: PEARL
- Wordle #1251, Thursday 21 November: SPINE
- Wordle #1250, Wednesday 20 November: NICHE
- Wordle #1249, Tuesday 19 November: GOING
- Wordle #1248, Monday 18 November: FRAIL
- Wordle #1247, Sunday 17 November: TALLY
- Wordle #1246, Saturday 16 November: VISOR
- Wordle #1245, Friday 15 November: TACKY
- Wordle #1244, Thursday 14 November: UVULA
- Wordle #1243, Wednesday 13 November: PRIMP
- Wordle #1242, Tuesday 12 November: FLOWN
- Wordle #1241, Monday 11 November: STOIC
- Wordle #1240, Sunday 10 November: INNER
- Wordle #1239, Saturday 9 November: SWELL
- Wordle #1238, Friday 8 November: READY
- Wordle #1237, Thursday 7 November: EVENT
- Wordle #1236, Wednesday 6 November: TRULY
- Wordle #1235, Tuesday 5 November: OCTET
- Wordle #1234, Monday 4 November: VINYL
- Wordle #1233, Sunday 3 November: BLAZE
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.
