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, and you can also take a look at my NYT Strands today and NYT Connections today pages for my 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.
Wordle hints (game #1197) – 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 #1197) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is 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.
Wordle hints (game #1197) – 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 #1197) – 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 #1197) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1197.
- Today’s Wordle answer is a thing you might need to solve today’s Wordle.
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 #1197)
- NYT average score: 3.5
- My score: 3
- WordleBot’s score: 3
- Best start word performance*: CRANE (7 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: DEMUR (252)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1197) is… BRAIN.
Me and my brain don’t always get on. It doesn’t work properly when it’s tired (which is most of the time), or hungry (ditto), or stressed (you get the message by now), and it can’t always solve Wordle when it really should be able to. But today? Today it did me proud.
Admittedly, my score of 3/6 was not solely down to smart thinking on my part; luck also played its role, as is usually the case. But I am pleased with my second guess here, which was a good ‘un.
BRAIN is not a hard Wordle by any stretch, with an average score of 3.5; are we ever going to get another tough game? But when my opening guess, DEMUR, left me with 252 possible solutions, a three seemed a long way off.
So I engaged my brain and accessed my knowledge of which letters are most common in which positions, as detailed in my analysis of every Wordle answer. All I had to work with was a yellow R, ruled out of the fifth position where it’s second most likely to appear. Its most common position is in second, where it regularly follows consonants such as T, C, P, B, G, F and D. On the vowel front, E and U were gone, so that left A, I and O.
With all that in mind, I could have gone down the -ROA- route and maybe played GROAN or CROAK, but neither of those used very common letters at both the start and end. A better option seemed to be -RAI-, because that could give me TRAIL or TRAIN, and T, L and N are all very, very common letters – particularly at the extremes of the word.
So I went with TRAIN, and that proved to be a good choice, because the final four letters turned green. That left me with two options – BRAIN and GRAIN – and I picked correctly for my three. Good brain.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1196)
In a different time zone where it’s still Friday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1196, 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 F.
F is a very common starting letter in Wordle. It ranks seventh behind only S, C, B, T, P and A and overall there are 135 solutions that begin with this letter.
- 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 H.
H is a regular visitor to the final spot in a Wordle word. It occurs 137 times at the end of a Wordle answer, making it the sixth most common letter there.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here’s an extra one for game #1196.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is belief without proof.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1196)
- NYT average score: 3.5
- My score: 3
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- Best start word performance*: SAINT (2 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: SHAKY (47)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1196) was… FAITH.
Another day, another easy Wordle. FAITH has an average score of 3.5, following 3.2, 3.4, 4.1, 3.4 and 3.1 over the previous five days, and as with Thursday’s THANK it features the TH combination. That’s common at both the start and end of an answer, but as my analysis of every Wordle answer shows, it’s more likely at the end than the start: it occurs 36 times there compared to 24 times at the beginning.
I have no idea if that’s a big reason why FAITH proved easy to solve, but it probably contributed to it. The more obvious factor is that there are no other words that differ from it by only a single letter – no solutions beyond FAITH for -AITH or FAIT- or FA-TH or any of the other formats. Most words have at least one alternative, and people often end up with a 50/50 between those words at the end. And some guess incorrectly.
However, people may well have cut down the options to only the one possible answer quite quickly, even if their first guess was not that helpful.
That’s what happened to me. SHAKY, my random starter word, was not a disaster, giving me yellow H and A, and leaving me with 47 options. Some openers were more fortunate – for instance SAINT left only two – but many were worse, such as CRANE, which left 187. But my second guess reduced that to just one, so I was able to score a three.
I went with LARCH, reasoning that if the H was yellow it might well go at the end after a T or C, and that if I also included an R it would cover off RCH words like MARCH and EARTH. This was actually a mistake, as I’d somehow missed the fact that there were also lots of ATCH words, such as WATCH, CATCH, HATCH and so on. This is among the very worst formats in the whole of Wordle, so if it had been one of these I’d have been in trouble. Streaks have been ended in this way.
Luckily, it wasn’t an ATCH word. LARCH only gave me green A and H, so no extra letters, but ruled out all other possibilities and left me to play FAITH for my three.
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 #1196, Friday 27 September: FAITH
- Wordle #1195, Thursday 26 September: THANK
- Wordle #1194, Wednesday 25 September: TORCH
- Wordle #1193, Tuesday 24 September: HANDY
- Wordle #1192, Monday 23 September: STEAM
- Wordle #1191, Sunday 22 September: TEACH
- Wordle #1190, Saturday 21 September: SEVEN
- Wordle #1189, Friday 20 September: SMOKE
- Wordle #1188, Thursday 19 September: PRESS
- Wordle #1187, Wednesday 18 September: FULLY
- Wordle #1186, Tuesday 17 September: BEAUT
- Wordle #1185, Monday 16 September: HONEY
- Wordle #1184, Sunday 15 September: RECUR
- Wordle #1183, Saturday 14 September: BROAD
- Wordle #1182, Friday 13 September: HARSH
- Wordle #1181, Thursday 12 September: BRASS
- Wordle #1180, Wednesday 11 September: AISLE
- Wordle #1179, Tuesday 10 September: REBEL
- Wordle #1178, Monday 9 September: DEBIT
- Wordle #1177, Sunday 8 September: DRAWN
- Wordle #1176, Saturday 7 September: OWNER
- Wordle #1175, Friday 6 September: RERUN
- Wordle #1174, Thursday 5 September: WIDEN
- Wordle #1173, Wednesday 4 September: STERN
- Wordle #1172, Tuesday 3 September: FAINT
- Wordle #1171, Monday 2 September: CAMEL
- Wordle #1170, Sunday 1 September: MUSHY
- Wordle #1169, Saturday 31 August: SPOUT
- Wordle #1168, Friday 30 August: KNAVE
- Wordle #1167, Thursday 29 August: FLUNK
- Wordle #1166, Wednesday 28 August: LITHE
- Wordle #1165, Tuesday 27 August: CROWN
- Wordle #1164, Monday 26 August: STAKE
- Wordle #1163, Sunday 25 August: SKATE
- Wordle #1162, Saturday 24 August: FILET
- Wordle #1161, Friday 23 August: LEECH
- Wordle #1160, Thursday 22 August: BRUTE
- Wordle #1159, Wednesday 21 August: MULCH
- Wordle #1158, Tuesday 20 August: DELAY
- Wordle #1157, Monday 19 August: METER
- Wordle #1156, Sunday 18 August: LANKY
- Wordle #1155, Saturday 17 August: STORM
- Wordle #1154, Friday 16 August: BRACE
- Wordle #1153, Thursday 15 August: ACORN
- Wordle #1152, Wednesday 14 August: SHORE
- Wordle #1151, Tuesday 13 August: NEIGH
- Wordle #1150, Monday 12 August: SKIFF
- Wordle #1149, Sunday 11 August: SCONE
- Wordle #1148, Saturday 10 August: MEDIC
- Wordle #1147, Friday 9 August: OUNCE
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.