It’s Friday, it’s the end of the working week (for some people) and it’s time to play Wordle. And today’s puzzle is a great example of what makes this game so compelling. It’s difficult but not impossible, it gets you thinking and it’s a lovely word.
Fancy some Wordle hints before you begin? Then read on for a selection of clues to guide you in the right direction. And if you don’t have time to play at all, you can see the answer, too. Want more word-based fun? My Quordle today page contains hints and answers for that game.
SPOILER WARNING: Information about today’s Wordle answers are below, so don’t read on if you don’t want to see them.
Wordle hints (game #678) – clue #1 – Vowels
How many vowels does today’s Wordle have?
• Wordle today has two vowels*.
* 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 #678) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is C.
C is a very common starting letter in Wordle – in fact, it’s the second most common of all, behind only S.
Wordle hints (game #678) – clue #3 – repeated letters
Does today’s Wordle have any repeated letters?
• There is one repeated letter 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 #678) – 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 #678) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for Wordle hints today? Don’t worry, I’ll give you one more for game #678.
- Today’s Wordle answer is approximately then.
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 #678)
Today’s Wordle answer (game #678) is… CIRCA.
I’m a big fan of this Wordle. Some days, it’s just too hard; Tuesday’s JOKER, probably the hardest Wordle of the year so far, was one such example. That’s not fun – it’s masochism. Some days, it’s too easy; it’s meant to be a challenge, after all. And some days, it’s just a bit dull – you know, it starts with a consonant, follows it with a vowel, then a consonant, vowel, consonant. You get lots of common letters in there, etc etc. Yesterday’s LOGIC was a bit like that. It was fine, but let’s face it, we won’t remember it in a week or so.
But CIRCA? That’s a nice Wordle. The NYT’s AI tool WordleBot says people are solving it in an average of 4.2 guesses, which means it’s harder than usual. But it’s not JOKER hard. It has a repeated letter in it, and it’s not an obvious one like E or L – it’s C, which only occurs twice in 29 Wordle solutions. It ends in an A, which is a lot less likely than you might expect given how common it is elsewhere.
And it’s a nice word in its own right. CIRCA. It flows around the tongue. Or maybe that’s just me.
Then again, it could be that I just like it because I scored a 3/6 today!
I wasn’t helped that much by my choice of starting word, either – STARE left me with 82 possible solutions, despite the fact that I had a yellow A and yellow R. Admittedly, that was a better result than that for some of the best Wordle starting words today: SLATE left 199 possible answers and SLANT left 269. However, others were a lot more successful. CRANE (10), CRATE (11) and TRACE (5) were both very fortunate starters, while CARTE left just two possible solutions!
My choice of second word was guided partly by my knowledge that A is almost as common in position #2 as it is in the middle of a Wordle answer; R is common in lots of places, but A usually crops up somewhere in the middle. CAROL seemed like a good option, as it also added the next most common vowel, O, and two very common consonants in C and L.
Well, I couldn’t have imagined quite how good an option it was: it took me from 82 possible answer to just one!
It didn’t take me too long to find it, either. There aren’t letters that can go between a C and an R, and once I had a vowel in there it was easy enough to place the A and realize that the solution was CIRCA.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #677)
In a different time zone where it’s still Thursday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #677, too.
- Wordle yesterday had two vowels.
- The first letter in yesterday’s Wordle answer was L.
- There were no repeated letters in yesterday’s Wordle.
- The last letter in yesterday’s Wordle was C.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is sound judgement.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #677)
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #677) was… LOGIC.
Wordle is a game of logic at heart, so it’s nice to see the word turn up as an answer. That doesn’t make it any easier to solve, of course, although as it happens it’s not too bad compared to some.
WordleBot gives it an average score of 3.9 based on a sample of the people who have already played today, and that sounds about right. It has a standard two-vowels-and-three-consonants format, uses only common letters and is far from an obscure word. Against that, the placement of the three consonants is a little uncommon, and the two vowels used occur far less frequently in Wordle than A and E.
Many people will have started the game off quite poorly, leaving that second guess with a lot of work to do. That includes those of you use one of the best Wordle starting words: SLATE (106 answers remaining), CRANE (69), SLANT (197), TRACE (68), CARTE and CRATE (both 64) were all fairly unhelpful today. The most popular starter, ADIEU, was no better – you had 145 answers left after playing that – but my choice of STARE was even worse, with 318 solutions still open to me.
That high number was the result of me failing to uncover a single letter on my opening guess, so I followed that up with the trusty COULD for my second. This almost always does the job, and it worked brilliantly today, giving me a green O, yellow C and yellow and – remarkably – reducing the possible answers list from 318 to just two!
That might be the single best second guess I’ve ever made, and it left me with a simple choice between LOGIC and FOLIC. They were the only two possible answers I could find, at least, and WordleBot agreed.
Each was equally likely, and I couldn’t recall either having been a past Wordle answer, so I went with the more common word and played LOGIC. Fortune smiled on me today and I scored another 3/6.
Wordle answers: The past 50
I’ve been playing Wordle every day for more than a year 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 #677, Thursday 27 April: LOGIC
- Wordle #676, Wednesday 26 April: METRO
- Wordle #675, Tuesday 25 April: JOKER
- Wordle #674, Monday 24 April: DITTO
- Wordle #673, Sunday 23 April: UNZIP
- Wordle #672, Saturday 22 April: BROKE
- Wordle #671, Friday 21 April: KAYAK
- Wordle #670, Thursday 20 April: PLATE
- Wordle #669, Wednesday 19 April: THUMP
- Wordle #668, Tuesday 18 April: HOUND
- Wordle #667, Monday 17 April: WHIFF
- Wordle #666, Sunday 16 April: DWELT
- Wordle #665, Saturday 15 April: AGONY
- Wordle #664, Friday 14 April: THIEF
- Wordle #663, Thursday 13 April: CARAT
- Wordle #662, Wednesday 12 April: BORAX
- Wordle #661, Tuesday 11 April: QUALM
- Wordle #660, Monday 10 April: UNDER
- Wordle #659, Sunday 9 April: SNAFU
- Wordle #658, Saturday 8 April: LEDGE
- Wordle #657, Friday 7 April: LOCUS
- Wordle #656, Thursday 6 April: LEAFY
- Wordle #655, Wednesday 5 April: SMASH
- Wordle #654, Tuesday 4 April: RATIO
- Wordle #653, Monday 3 April: FLORA
- Wordle #652, Sunday 2 April: STOCK
- Wordle #651, Saturday 1 April: MARCH
- Wordle #650, Friday 31 March: EVERY
- Wordle #649, Thursday 30 March: BREAD
- Wordle #648, Wednesday 29 March: BESET
- Wordle #647, Tuesday 28 March: HURRY
- Wordle #646, Monday 27 March: GUANO
- Wordle #645, Sunday 26 March: UNTIE
- Wordle #644, Saturday 25 March: VOTER
- Wordle #643, Friday 24 March: GROUT
- Wordle #642, Thursday 23 March: STAID
- Wordle #641, Wednesday 22 March: DUVET
- Wordle #640, Tuesday 21 March: TOUGH
- Wordle #639, Monday 20 March: GLOVE
- Wordle #638, Sunday 19 March: CREDO
- Wordle #637, Saturday 18 March: YACHT
- Wordle #636, Friday 17 March: MEALY
- Wordle #635, Thursday 16 March: CIDER
- Wordle #634, Wednesday 15 March: SWEEP
- Wordle #633, Tuesday 14 March: SURLY
- Wordle #632, Monday 13 March: BLAME
- Wordle #631, Sunday 12 March: BIRTH
- Wordle #630, Saturday 11 March: EMAIL
- Wordle #629, Friday 10 March: REVEL
- Wordle #628, Thursday 9 March: WHERE
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 2023.
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.