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 new NYT Strands today page for my verdict on the New York Times' latest brainteaser.
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 two 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. He's also played every Wordle ever and only lost once and yes, he takes it all too seriously.
Wordle hints (game #1,032) - 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 #1,032) - clue #2 - first letter
What letter does today's Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today's Wordle answer is 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.
Wordle hints (game #1,032) - 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 #1,032) - clue #4 - ending letter
What letter does today's Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today's Wordle is K.
K is much more common at the end of a Wordle answer than at the start, and in fact ranks ninth overall in this regard.
Wordle hints (game #1,032) - clue #5 - last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here's an extra one for game #1,032.
- Today's Wordle answer is a cut of meat or a wayward shot.
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 #1,032)
- NYT average score: 3.8
- My score: 4
- WordleBot's score: 3
- Best start word performance*: SAINT (5 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: CABAL (258)
* From WordleBot's Top 20 start words
Today's Wordle answer (game #1,032) is… SHANK.
Yesterday's Wordle caused no end of problems, judging by the amount of people who visited this page for hints and/or the answer. That's despite the fact that its average score was only 3.9 when I wrote my column, upgraded to 4.0 by the time everyone had finished playing. Not easy, but not ridiculously high either.
The reason for that dichotomy, as I discussed in my commentary (see below), was the performance of ADIEU and AUDIO. These are the two most popular start words, and both cut down the options considerably. So although the average was not so high, people who didn't play either of those words will have found it much, much harder. It was probably a 3.4 game for ADIEU/AUDIO players and a 4.4 game for everyone else.
I doubt today's Wordle will have the same split. Yes, a few of the best Wordle start words helped more than others when it came to SHANK, but the difference is unlikely to be anywhere near as pronounced as it was for EQUIP.
WordleBot says the average score here is 3.8, so only a little below what it was for EQUIP – but I'd be amazed if it causes the same level of pain. That said, it's not down at 3.4 like STEEL, say, so it's not entirely without complications either.
For starters, K is not the most common letter in the Wordle alphabet; in fact, it ranks only 20th. H, meanwhile, is only a middling letter too, ranking 14th. But in both those cases, there are mitigating factors that reduce the impact. For instance, while K is not the most common letter in the Wordle alphabet, it's way more likely to appear at the end of a solution than it is elsewhere. What about the H? Well, as I show in my analysis of every Wordle answer, that SH starting combo is the second most common overall (behind ST, in case you're interested).
All of which adds up to… a middling game. In terms of the best start words, only one of the top 20 cut down the options to single figures, and that was SAINT (5), which is not a common choice. CRANE left 20, SLATE and STARE left 31. Yes, it was one of those middling days.
My random word today was CABAL, which was not very helpful and which left 258 options. From there I played STARE, partly for old times' sake (it used to be my start word) and partly because it moved the A to the middle, where it appears most often, then added some very common letters to it.
STARE cut my word list to 16, and because both the S and A turned green, it was very easy for me to identify them. There are, after all, only so many letters that can sit between S and A. I came up with most of them: SWAMP, SPAWN, SOAPY, SHADY, SHAKY, SMASH, SPANK, SWASH and SHANK. Yes, I missed a few (SWAIN, SPASM, SWAMI) but I had enough info to know that WHISK was a good third guess.
WHISK gave me the green H and K that confirmed I now only had one possible solution. That was SHANK, and I played it next for a 4/6.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday's Wordle hints (game #1,031)
In a different time zone where it's still Monday? Don't worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1,031, too.
- Wordle yesterday had 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).
- The first letter in yesterday's Wordle answer was 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.
- 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 P.
P is a middling end letter in Wordle. It features in 56 answers, which places it 12th in the alphabet. Don't expect it to happen that often compared to the likes of E, Y and T.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here's an extra one for game #1,031.
- Yesterday's Wordle answer is to make ready.
Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #1,031)
- NYT average score: 3.9
- My score: 4
- WordleBot's score: 3
- Best start word performance*: PARSE (37 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: BLIND (166)
* From WordleBot's Top 20 start words
Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #1,031) was… EQUIP.
Your experience here is likely to vary greatly depending on whether you began with one of two specific starting words. Neither is among the best Wordle start words, but both are among the most popular. And today they will undoubtedly have skewed the overall score.
WordleBot says people are solving EQUIP in an average of 3.9 guesses, which is about the overall average for the game and which implies it's not particularly hard. Frankly, I expected it be way above that – maybe 4.2 or 4.3 – because EQUIP has several of the elements that many harder Wordles have.
Firstly, there's that Q; as my analysis of every Wordle answer shows, this is the second least common letter in the game. It only appears 29 times in total among Wordle's original 2,309 solutions, so it really is a rarity.
Beyond that, there's the fact that it starts with a relatively uncommon starting letter, and ends with a relatively uncommon ending letter (though P was also the last letter in yesterday's game, too). And finally, there's the fact that none of the best opening words cut down the options by any great amount.
But that brings me back to my original point. While the likes of CRANE (273) and SLATE (328) made no great progress today, AUDIO left only 10 solutions and ADIEU left eight. Given that they accounted for 13% of all opening guesses today, that's a lot of people who will have stood a good chance of a 3/6 or better.
I was not one of them. My random start word was BLIND, which was unlucky today and which left 166 words to choose from. My second guess, STAIR, reduced that to AUDIO/ADIEU-like levels (seven options), but I had too much work to do to get home in fewer than four.
The seven words still left to me after STAIR were MOVIE, MOXIE, EQUIP, PIXIE, COMIC, MIMIC and CIVIC. I found five of them, but not MOXIE or PIXIE; that X obviously tripped me up. I decided to go with COMIC, which would be guaranteed to eliminate all of the answers – or so I thought. As is often the case, it wasn't guaranteed to eliminate the answers that I'd missed, which might have come back to haunt me.
Fortunately, it didn't. COMIC reduced the answer pool to two, EQUIP and PIXIE, but at this stage I still hadn't found the latter. I played EQUIP thinking it was the only possible answer, and it was only when I consulted WordleBot later that I realized I'd got lucky on a 50/50.
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 #1031, Monday 15 April: EQUIP
- Wordle #1030, Sunday 14 April: BLIMP
- Wordle #1029, Saturday 13 April: STEEL
- Wordle #1028, Friday 12 April: WHINY
- Wordle #1027, Thursday 11 April: LOUSE
- Wordle #1026, Wednesday 10 April: BROTH
- Wordle #1025, Tuesday 9 April: MERGE
- Wordle #1024, Monday 8 April: BREED
- Wordle #1023, Sunday 7 April: VOILA
- Wordle #1022, Saturday 6 April: FINCH
- Wordle #1021, Friday 5 April: WRIST
- Wordle #1020, Thursday 4 April: CLIMB
- Wordle #1019, Wednesday 3 April: PLAIT
- Wordle #1018, Tuesday 2 April: SERUM
- Wordle #1017, Monday 1 April: FROND
- Wordle #1016, Sunday 31 March: TABOO
- Wordle #1015, Saturday 30 March: FORCE
- Wordle #1014, Friday 29 March: REALM
- Wordle #1013, Thursday 28 March: SPEAK
- Wordle #1012, Wednesday 27 March: STUNG
- Wordle #1011, Tuesday 26 March: MAYOR
- Wordle #1010, Monday 25 March: SALLY
- Wordle #1009, Sunday 24 March: TOWEL
- Wordle #1008, Saturday 23 March: RISEN
- Wordle #1007, Friday 22 March: DECAY
- Wordle #1006, Thursday 21 March: SHADE
- Wordle #1005, Wednesday 20 March: LINGO
- Wordle #1004, Tuesday 19 March: ABIDE
- Wordle #1003, Monday 18 March: SPELT
- Wordle #1002, Sunday 17 March: SNORT
- Wordle #1001, Saturday 16 March: TOXIN
- Wordle #1000, Friday 15 March: ERUPT
- Wordle #999, Thursday 14 March: SINCE
- Wordle #998, Wednesday 13 March: LOCAL
- Wordle #997, Tuesday 12 March: HEAVE
- Wordle #996, Monday 11 March: PESKY
- Wordle #995, Sunday 10 March: GRASP
- Wordle #994, Saturday 9 March: CHEER
- Wordle #993, Friday 8 March: EARLY
- Wordle #992, Thursday 7 March: CLONE
- Wordle #991, Wednesday 6 March: TEARY
- Wordle #990, Tuesday 5 March: HUNCH
- Wordle #989, Monday 4 March: FLAME
- Wordle #988, Sunday 3 March: STATE
- Wordle #987, Saturday 2 March: URBAN
- Wordle #986, Friday 1 March: FORTY
- Wordle #985, Thursday 29 February: IMAGE
- Wordle #984, Wednesday 28 February: DEVIL
- Wordle #983, Tuesday 27 February: SENSE
- Wordle #982, Monday 26 February: OFTEN
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.
