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 Thursday'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.
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.
Article continues belowSPOILER 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 #1728) - clue #1 - Vowels
How many vowels does today's Wordle have?
• Wordle today has vowels in three 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 #1728) - clue #2 - first letter
What letter does today's Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today's Wordle answer is E.
We don't get many Wordle answers that start with an E – though it's the most common letter in the game, it's only the 14th most likely to begin a solution.
Wordle hints (game #1728) - 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 #1728) - 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 #1728) - clue #5 - last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here's an extra one for game #1728.
- Today's Wordle answer is to have fed.
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 #1728)
- NYT average score: 4.3
- My score: 3
- WordleBot's score: 3
- My skill score: 85
- My luck score: 88
- My start word performance: SANER (11 remaining answers)
- WordleBot's start word performance: SLATE (43)
- Tomorrow's start word: SANER
Today's Wordle answer (game #1728) is… EATEN.
EATEN is by several measures a difficult Wordle. For a start, it has a repeated letter — yes, another one! This isn't necessarily a big problem, because E is the most likely letter to be repeated, but it tends to make it a little tougher.
The bigger factors are that the repeated letters are split up, and that it has a less common two-vowel start. These may have made it harder to spot the first E (the second one was probably easier to identify), simply because the brain doesn't necessarily expect it there.
It's a curious thing about E that it's so likely to appear everywhere other than at the start of a word. Just look at that table below: there are more than 100 fewer instances of E at the start than in the middle, and exactly 350 fewer than at the end. A mere 5% of all Es turn up at the beginning, and it only ranks 14th among all letters in this regard.
Position | Appearances | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
1st position | 72 | 5.85% |
2nd position | 241 | 19.59% |
3rd position | 177 | 14.39% |
4th position | 318 | 25.85% |
5th position | 422 | 34.31% |
Total | 1230 | 100.00% |
As far as 'two vowels together at the start' goes, there are shockingly few of them — only 23 among the 2,309 original answers.
Seven of those are EA words, and of those EATEN is the sixth, with EARTH (game #752), EARLY (#993), EASEL (#1229), EAGLE (#1284) and EAGER (#1426) having appeared already.
All of which may explain why the average today is 4.3, even higher than the 4.2 for yesterday's SMELL. Unlike with yesterday's game, though, I managed to score a three — my third in what's been a decent week for me, certainly better than the previous one.
Admittedly, I owed a lot to good luck, because SANER left only 11 words. I only came up with five of those, which were TAKEN, HAVEN, WAKEN, MAVEN and WAXEN, though I dismissed the last because it appeared in January; yes, Wordle is now doing repeats, but I don't think it would do one this recently…
That meant that I didn't find EATEN or course, or LADEN, NAMED, NAVEL, NAKED or OAKEN. It wasn't my best performance, then, but my choice of THICK next was very fortunate, removing 10 of the 11 possibilities and pointing me directly towards EATEN as the answer.
I will admit that it took me a little while to identify it, but once I spotted it I was certain it would be the solution and that proved to be the case.
Yesterday's Wordle hints (game #1727)
In a different time zone where it's still Thursday? Don't worry — I can give you some clues for Wordle #1727, 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 S.
S is the most common starting letter in the game, featuring in 365 of Wordle's 2,309 answers. In fact, it's almost twice as likely to begin an answer as the next most common starting letter, C.
- 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 L.
L is a really common letter to find at the end of a Wordle. There are 155 games that finish with an L, and it ranks as the fifth most likely letter there.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here's an extra one for game #1727.
- Yesterday's Wordle answer is a sense.
Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #1727)
- NYT average score: 4.2
- My score: 4
- WordleBot's score: 3
- My skill score: 88
- My luck score: 53
- My start word performance: SANER (44 remaining answers)
- WordleBot's start word performance: SLATE (7)
- Tomorrow's start word: SANER
Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #1727) was… SMELL.
What a surprise — it's another Wordle answer with a repeated letter. This is our fifth in the past 10 days, continuing the pattern we've seen for a few weeks now. This could be random chance, but it's beginning to feel a little deliberate.
Whereas the repeated D in Wednesday's TEDDY didn't appear to complicate things too much — the average score was only 3.8 — SMELL is proving a tougher nut to crack. At the time of writing, it's being solved in 4.2 guesses, which makes it the hardest of the week so far (assuming your week starts on a Monday).
L is a common letter to be repeated, the third most likely after E and O, so why is it playing so much harder than TEDDY? Well, it's not an absence of helpful start words, because SLATE left only seven. But it could well be the too-many-answers problem: SPELL, SWELL and SHELL are all obvious ones, as are SMALL and to an extent SMELT.
I ended up needing to make the SPELL, SWELL, SMELL choice myself, after SANER and then CLOTH whittled down the options to a shortlist of five. Those three were all on my list, as was SMILE, but I didn't think of SIDLE.
This could have come back to haunt me, because based on the words I had found, I worked out that WHELP would narrow down the possibilities. In reality, it might have left me a 50/50 between SMILE and SIDLE. If that had happened, I'd almost certainly have played SMILE next, then SIDLE, and would have ended up with a five.
As it was, I got lucky with this one when the E turned green but the W, H and P stayed gray. That meant that SMELL was the only solution, so I scored a perfectly acceptable four after all.
Wordle answers: The past 50
I've been playing Wordle every day for more than three 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 #1727, Thursday 12 March: SMELL
- Wordle #1726, Wednesday 11 March: TEDDY
- Wordle #1725, Tuesday 10 March: SHOAL
- Wordle #1724, Monday 9 March: HASTY
- Wordle #1723, Sunday 8 March: LOBBY
- Wordle #1722, Saturday 7 March: VOGUE
- Wordle #1721, Friday 6 March: GUNKY
- Wordle #1720, Thursday 5 March: SHEEP
- Wordle #1719, Wednesday 4 March: THEFT
- Wordle #1718, Tuesday 3 March: LINEN
- Wordle #1717, Monday 2 March: SLIME
- Wordle #1716, Sunday 1 March: FLUKE
- Wordle #1715, Saturday 28 February: HYDRA
- Wordle #1714, Friday 27 February: DIZZY
- Wordle #1713, Thursday 26 February: LANCE
- Wordle #1712, Wednesday 25 February: SHRED
- Wordle #1711, Tuesday 24 February: BUYER
- Wordle #1710, Monday 23 February: ATTIC
- Wordle #1709, Sunday 22 February: GUAVA
- Wordle #1708, Saturday 21 February: AWAKE
- Wordle #1707, Friday 20 February: STANK
- Wordle #1706, Thursday 19 February: HOIST
- Wordle #1705, Wednesday 18 February: MOGUL
- Wordle #1704, Tuesday 17 February: SQUAD
- Wordle #1703, Monday 16 February: ROOST
- Wordle #1702, Sunday 15 February: SKULL
- Wordle #1701, Saturday 14 February: BLOOM
- Wordle #1700, Friday 13 February: MOOCH
- Wordle #1699, Thursday 12 February: SURGE
- Wordle #1698, Wednesday 11 February: VEGAN
- Wordle #1697, Tuesday 10 February: SCENE
- Wordle #1696, Monday 9 February: CELLO
- Wordle #1695, Sunday 8 February: EMBED
- Wordle #1694, Saturday 7 February: BLEAT
- Wordle #1693, Friday 6 February: GAVEL
- Wordle #1692, Thursday 5 February: SWOOP
- Wordle #1691, Wednesday 4 February: CHIDE
- Wordle #1690, Tuesday 3 February: WEIGH
- Wordle #1689, Monday 2 February: CIGAR
- Wordle #1688, Sunday 1 February: SPINY
- Wordle #1687, Saturday 31 January: ALLOT
- Wordle #1686, Friday 30 January: JUMBO
- Wordle #1685, Thursday 29 January: FLAKY
- Wordle #1684, Wednesday 28 January: CRUEL
- Wordle #1683, Tuesday 27 January: DUSKY
- Wordle #1682, Monday 26 January: FREAK
- Wordle #1681, Sunday 25 January: STRUT
- Wordle #1680, Saturday 24 January: CLIFF
- Wordle #1679, Friday 23 January: BARON
- Wordle #1678, Thursday 22 January: CLINK
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.
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