A new NYT Wordle puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Wednesday's puzzle instead then click here.
Skip the hints and jump straight to today's column.
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 four 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 #1839) - 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 #1839) - clue #2 - first letter
What letter does today's Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today's Wordle answer is M.
M is a middling letter when it comes to starting a word. It sits 10th in the rankings, with 107 occurrences in the 2,309 answers.
Wordle hints (game #1839) - 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 #1839) - 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 #1839) - clue #5 - last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here's an extra one for game #1839.
- Today's Wordle answer is an expert.
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 #1839)
- NYT average score: 4.5
- My score: 3
- WordleBot's score: 3
- My skill score: 92
- My luck score: 69
- My start word performance: SANER (11 remaining answers)
- WordleBot's start word performance: SLATE (140)
- Tomorrow's start word: SANER
Today's Wordle answer (game #1839) is… MAVEN.
I didn't have the best time of it in June, with only seven scores of three against 20 fours and three fives; my average for the month was a less-than-stellar 3.86, against an overall average of 3.67 for the 1,640 games I've played.
July, however, has started much more positively, with threes on both days so far. Considering that the average yesterday was 4.1 and the average today is 4.5, that's a decent return.
Why is MAVEN proving so tough? Well, that's an easy one: the existence of the word HAVEN. According to WordleBot, more people played it than MAVEN on both the second and third guesses, and even on the fourth and fifth it accounted for 14% and 8% of guesses respectively.
Those players presumably didn't remember that HAVEN has already appeared: it was the solution to game #1,582, in October 2025. A repeat would have been possible, but very unlikely.
I didn't recall that HAVEN had appeared either, but fortunately never needed to worry about that, simply because of how my game developed. For the second day running, SANER did a lot of the hard work, on this occasion giving me green A, green E and yellow N, and reducing the shortlist to 11.
I didn't think of all 11, but came up with seven including the eventual answer: TAKEN, LADEN, EATEN, MAVEN, HAVEN, WAKEN and WAXEN. The ones I missed were NAMED, NAKED, OAKEN and NAVEL, all of which I should probably have thought of.
Still, my choice of WHELK next was not hugely affected by the words I'd missed, because though it left me a three-way choice between MAVEN, EATEN and NAMED, I treated it as a 50/50 between the first two and guessed the correct one.
EATEN was the more obvious word, sure, but I had a strong sense that it was a recent answer — and I was correct, because it appeared in March this year. So I played MAVEN instead and got that second successive three.
Yesterday's Wordle hints (game #1838)
In a different time zone where it's still Wednesday? Don't worry — I can give you some clues for Wordle #1838, 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 D.
D is the ninth most common starting letter in the game, so maybe slightly less likely than you might expect.
- 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 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.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here's an extra one for game #1838.
- Yesterday's Wordle answer is to disagree politely with a statement.
Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #1838)
- NYT average score: 4.1
- My score: 3
- WordleBot's score: 4
- My skill score: 93
- My luck score: 77
- My start word performance: SANER (8 remaining answers)
- WordleBot's start word performance: SLATE (329)
- Tomorrow's start word: SANER
Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #1838) was… DEMUR.
The first thing I'll say about DEMUR is that it is not the same as the arguably more common demure, which means reserved or modest; without the E it instead becomes a more old fashioned word related to politely disagreeing. I suspect it is not used very often by the majority of daily Wordlers.
That may explain why it had a relatively high average of 4.1 despite not on the face of it being a hugely complicated word; there are no triple or even double letters, nor any really uncommon ones.
The second thing I'll say about this answer is that I scored a three — and the third is that I was extremely lucky. Most of that luck came on my opening guess, with SANER leaving me with only eight possible solutions.
DEMUR was not on the list I drew up, which instead consisted of DECOR, ERROR, RECUR, THEIR and FEMUR. I knew that LEMUR and KEFIR were also possibilities, but dismissed both as having been answers too recently (in December 2024 and August 2025 respectively; both stuck in my mind as unusual Wordle words).
Among the words I'd shortlisted, DECOR was guaranteed to give me the answer, unless it was one of those two recent-ish solutions — so it felt like a reasonable risk to play it. The 'Bot suggested FLUID, which would indeed have guaranteed the answer whatever it was, but without the chance that it might be correct, whereas DECOR might have given me a two.
It didn't do that, but by turning the D green it ruled out all of the rest of my solutions, so I needed another one. I ended up having to work through the alphabet in search of words that had that DE--R format that fit the remaining letters, and eventually settled upon DEMUR for my 'Bot-beating three.
Wordle answers: The past 50
I've been playing Wordle every day for more than four 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 #1838, Wednesday 1 July: DEMUR
- Wordle #1837, Tuesday 30 June: PUPPY
- Wordle #1836, Monday 29 June: CRUDE
- Wordle #1835, Sunday 28 June: EMCEE
- Wordle #1834, Saturday 27 June: SCOOP
- Wordle #1833, Friday 26 June: ACUTE
- Wordle #1832, Thursday 25 June: UNITY
- Wordle #1831, Wednesday 24 June: QUEER
- Wordle #1830, Tuesday 23 June: CURRY
- Wordle #1829, Monday 22 June: OVATE
- Wordle #1828, Sunday 21 June: ALIBI
- Wordle #1827, Saturday 20 June: DRAKE
- Wordle #1826, Friday 19 June: EMOJI
- Wordle #1825, Thursday 18 June: ENTRY
- Wordle #1824, Wednesday 17 June: TOKEN
- Wordle #1823, Tuesday 16 June: AMAZE
- Wordle #1822, Monday 15 June: BROIL
- Wordle #1821, Sunday 14 June: SEPIA
- Wordle #1820, Saturday 13 June: QUELL
- Wordle #1819, Friday 12 June: BREAK
- Wordle #1818, Thursday 11 June: TESTY
- Wordle #1817, Wednesday 10 June: ALIGN
- Wordle #1816, Tuesday 9 June: WHARF
- Wordle #1815, Monday 8 June: MAFIA
- Wordle #1814, Sunday 7 June: THUMB
- Wordle #1813, Saturday 6 June: MORPH
- Wordle #1812, Friday 5 June: NOBLY
- Wordle #1811, Thursday 4 June: ALLOY
- Wordle #1810, Wednesday 3 June: NOTCH
- Wordle #1809, Tuesday 2 June: BASIS
- Wordle #1808, Monday 1 June: CHILI
- Wordle #1807, Sunday 31 May: ETUDE
- Wordle #1806, Saturday 30 May: SMILE
- Wordle #1805, Friday 29 May: CLANG
- Wordle #1804, Thursday 28 May: DIVOT
- Wordle #1803, Wednesday 27 May: STUFF
- Wordle #1802, Tuesday 26 May: COUCH
- Wordle #1801, Monday 25 May: VISIT
- Wordle #1800, Sunday 24 May: NIECE
- Wordle #1799, Saturday 23 May: CHUCK
- Wordle #1798, Friday 22 May: VOCAL
- Wordle #1797, Thursday 21 May: AGREE
- Wordle #1796, Wednesday 20 May: WRECK
- Wordle #1795, Tuesday 19 May: DUSTY
- Wordle #1794, Monday 18 May: LOATH
- Wordle #1793, Sunday 17 May: BYLAW
- Wordle #1792, Saturday 16 May: MOVER
- Wordle #1791, Friday 15 May: CREED
- Wordle #1790, Thursday 14 May: WAVER
- Wordle #1789, Wednesday 13 May: DOWDY
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 in 2022 and is still going strong in 2026.
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' Games 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.
4a. Answers are never plural.
4b. …unless they are. There have been a couple of plural words that don't end in an S or ES, including FUNGI (game #439), ATRIA (#1478) and TEETH (#1551). But S and ES plurals are definitely outlawed.
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.
10a. All answers are drawn from Wordle's list of 2,309 solutions…
10b. …unless they are not. That's because the NYT has added in some of its own words which weren't in that list of 2,309 solutions. More will undoubtedly come over the next few years.
10c. Plus, the NYT has now started repeating answers that have already appeared in Wordle. We have no idea how often it will do this, so you'll need to be on your guard.
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 4a above), but Wordle will accept it as a guess.
