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 #1254) – 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 #1254) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is T.
T is one of the most common starting letters in the game, beginning 149 of Wordle’s 2,309 answers. That gives it a ranking of fourth in the alphabet, behind only S, C and B.
Wordle hints (game #1254) – 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 #1254) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is T.
T is a very common letter to end a Wordle answer – in fact only E and Y are more likely in that position.
Wordle hints (game #1254) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1254.
- Today’s Wordle answer is an unexpected turn.
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 #1254)
- NYT average score: 3.9
- My score: 4
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- Best start word performance*: TASER (2 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: DECRY (468)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1254) is… TWIST.
This is both an easy-ish and a hard-ish Wordle, and which one it is for you will probably depend on your choice of start word. TRACE, for instance, left only 23 possible solutions and TASER a very fortunate two. But more pertinently for the game, STARE – the third most common opener – left 26, RAISE (the fourth today) left 12, ARISE (the sixth) was also at 12 and TRAIN (the seventh) was at 16. In contrast, CRANE left a whopping 356.
On days like this, where the popular start words are split between lucky and unlucky, we usually end up with a middling average score, and so it is today, with a 3.9 average at the time of writing. And it’s a middling kind of word, too: there’s a repeated letter, but that’s T, one of the most common letters in general; there’s an S, but it’s not in its usual place at the start of a word; there’s only one vowel, and it’s not an A or E.
I’m reasonably happy with my own score of four today, even though it was worse than the average, because I was in the unlucky camp start-word wise. My random word generator gave me DECRY, which in some situations would be a very good opener but which today drew a blank and left me with a long list of 468 words. I didn’t try to find them, obviously, but instead played some of the most common remaining letters in the form of SLANT. This worked well and gave me an S and a T. The T was green at the end of the word but the S, surprisingly, was only yellow at the start.
Obviously it would instead sit before that T at the end, which helped me to find most of the 11 answers that WordleBot decided remained. I had FOIST, JOIST, MOIST and HOIST, plus JOUST, POSIT, WHIST, BOOST and GHOST, but missed TWIST and VISIT.
I couldn’t see a way to guarantee myself a four here, but worked out that going for WHOMP – a favorite of mine in these situations – would rule in/out all but three, potentially leaving me a choice of FOIST, JOIST or JOUST on the next guess. Fortunately that didn’t happen: WHOMP gave me a yellow W, which meant the answer could instead only be TWIST. I hadn’t found it before my third guess, but realized my mistake and corrected it on the fourth.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #1253)
In a different time zone where it’s still Saturday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1253, 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 J.
J is the least common letter overall in Wordle, but is only the fourth least likely starting letter. That’s because it begins 20 out of the 27 answers it appears in (Y, Z and X are all less common starting letters).
- 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 Y.
Y is the second most common ending letter in the game, behind only E. In total, 364 Wordle answers end with a Y.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here’s an extra one for game #1253.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is a shapeless mass.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1253)
- NYT average score: 4.4
- My score: 5
- WordleBot’s score: 4
- Best start word performance*: STALE (15 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: LATER (75)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1253) was… JELLY.
Wordle’s been a little easier over the past week (though you wouldn’t know it from my scores), but JELLY is the first truly tough one since UVULA nine games ago.
It contains several elements regularly seen in difficult Wordles: a repeated letter, an uncommon letter, and a couple of similarly spelled alternatives. The J at the start is probably the most destructive of those factors; as my analysis of every Wordle answer shows, J is the least common letter in the game, appearing in a mere 27 out of the original 2,309 solutions.
Compared to that, a repeated L is almost likely – there are 71 of these in the answer list. But it’s still a lot less likely than getting one L, so it’s all relative. As for the too-many-answers aspect, it’s not exactly in -ATCH territory, but plenty of people played BELLY or WELLY today, so it will have contributed towards the high average score of 4.4. Spare a thought, too, for the 0.6% of people today who played, er, KELLY, or the 0.4% who went with FELLY. No, me neither.
I did play BELLY, however, and that – on a 50/50 – was the difference between a decent score and a lackluster one. LATER, my opening guess, had left 75 answers; an average result on most days, at best, but not too bad here given that CRANE left 273 and STARE 248.
I followed up with CLONE, which was simply a case of me playing the percentages, and though I cut that list to 17, WordleBot said I was unlucky and that it would have expected me to have only half of that number of options by now. My third guess was far more successful, with DEVIL cutting the list to only BELLY and JELLY. However, that was as far as my luck went, so I had to settle for that disappointing five. I won’t be the only one, I’m sure.
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 #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
- Wordle #1232, Saturday 2 November: SNOOP
- Wordle #1231, Friday 1 November: SIXTH
- Wordle #1230, Thursday 31 October: WEIRD
- Wordle #1229, Wednesday 30 October: EASEL
- Wordle #1228, Tuesday 29 October: TUNIC
- Wordle #1227, Monday 28 October: BAWDY
- Wordle #1226, Sunday 27 October: SANDY
- Wordle #1225, Saturday 26 October: WREAK
- Wordle #1224, Friday 25 October: FROWN
- Wordle #1223, Thursday 24 October: BOSSY
- Wordle #1222, Wednesday 23 October: GOOFY
- Wordle #1221, Tuesday 22 October: SHOUT
- Wordle #1220, Monday 21 October: SPOON
- Wordle #1219, Sunday 20 October: DICEY
- Wordle #1218, Saturday 19 October: FIBER
- Wordle #1217, Friday 18 October: STINT
- Wordle #1216, Thursday 17 October: HALVE
- Wordle #1215, Wednesday 16 October: GRANT
- Wordle #1214, Tuesday 15 October: CORER
- Wordle #1213, Monday 14 October: GAMUT
- Wordle #1212, Sunday 13 October: PRONE
- Wordle #1211, Saturday 12 October: STAIN
- Wordle #1210, Friday 11 October: GUSTY
- Wordle #1209, Thursday 10 October: CARVE
- Wordle #1208, Wednesday 9 October: MOMMY
- Wordle #1207, Tuesday 8 October: JOINT
- Wordle #1206, Monday 7 October: FLOUR
- Wordle #1205, Sunday 6 October: LAGER
- Wordle #1204, Saturday 5 October: MINER
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.