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 #1198) – 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 #1198) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is R.
R is a surprisingly uncommon starting letter. Despite ranking third overall in Wordle, it’s merely the 11th most likely to begin an answer.
Wordle hints (game #1198) – 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 #1198) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is R.
R is a very common letter to end a Wordle answer – it’s actually the 4th most common there, behind E, Y and T.
Wordle hints (game #1198) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1198.
- Today’s Wordle answer could be on horseback.
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 #1198)
- NYT average score: 4.4
- My score: 4
- WordleBot’s score: 5
- Best start word performance*: TRADE (49 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: GRANT (269)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1198) is… RIDER.
And so like clockwork here comes another ER answer in Wordle, guaranteed to make the game more difficult after a very easy period. It’s early days for the average score, but WordleBot says it’s currently being solved in 4.4 guesses – making it the most difficult word since FULLY a couple of weeks ago.
I doubt that I need to go into much detail about why it’s difficult; ER words are numerous, so there are simply too many to chose from. Add in the fact that RIDER has a repeated R too and you have the ingredients for a toughie.
Start words won’t have helped much, either; most of WordleBot’s top 20 were over 100, and CRANE – its favorite – left 191 possibles. My random opener was GRANT, which was even worse in that it left 269, but I managed to get home in four guesses, while the ‘bot needed five. And yes, that delighted me!
The keys to my relatively successful day were that I worked out it was an ER word early on, and that I spent a loooooong time thinking about what my third guess was. With only a yellow R to play with after the first attempt, I figured it was sensible to rule out (or in) an ER answer, so went with LOSER as it included lots of common letters. This gave me the ER format and cut my word list to 36. Not bad – but still a long way to go.
I set about finding as many options as I could, and came up with a couple of dozen. About half were -I-ER words, with a smattering of -E-ER and -U-ER options mixed in, plus a few random ones such as CHEER and ICIER. I spent ages working out what the best word to play next was, and in the end decided to go with CUPID; while this couldn’t be right, it would enable me to rule in/out those two vowels, plus three consonants that appeared regularly on my shortlist.
CUPID worked pretty well, giving me yellow I and D, and reducing those options to five. I had three on my list: DIVER, WIDER and RIDER, but missed HIDER (which seems unlikely) and EIDER (which might well be an answer).
Based on the three that I had, I decided that RIDER was a good choice as it would give me the answer either way. WIDER would have done the same, of course, but I thought that maybe it had been a past Wordle answer. It hadn’t – that was WIDEN earlier this month – but my poor memory turned out to be an advantage, because I played RIDER and scored a four.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1197)
In a different time zone where it’s still Saturday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1197, 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 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 #1197.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is a thing you might need to solve today’s Wordle.
Yesterday’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
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1197) was… 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 yesterday? Yesterday 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.
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 #1197, Saturday 28 September: BRAIN
- 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
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.