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.
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 three 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 #1643) - 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 #1643) - clue #2 - first letter
What letter does today's Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today's Wordle answer is R.
R is a surprisingly uncommon starting letter. Despite ranking third overall in Wordle, it's merely the 11th most likely to begin an answer.
Wordle hints (game #1643) - 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 #1643) - clue #4 - ending letter
What letter does today's Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today's Wordle is Y.
Y is the second most common ending letter in the game, behind only E. In total, 364 Wordle answers end with a Y.
Wordle hints (game #1643) - clue #5 - last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here's an extra one for game #1643.
- Today's Wordle answer is a sport.
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 #1643)
- NYT average score: 4.3
- My score: 5
- WordleBot's score: 4
- My skill score: 96
- My luck score: 24
- My start word performance: SANER (139 remaining answers)
- WordleBot's start word performance: SLATE (315)
- Tomorrow's start word: SANER
Today's Wordle answer (game #1643) is… RUGBY.
Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. My first 5/6 for three weeks comes on an admittedly tough day, but this game represents a personal failure for me.
Why? Well, RUGBY – the town after which the sport is named (or rather the town that contains the school after which the sport is named) – is my hometown. I lived there until the age of 18 and the fact that I somehow managed not to spot it sooner is, frankly, ridiculous.
Not that too many people are doing much better than me by the looks of it, because this Wordle has an average score of 4.3 at the time of writing. That's understandable – because while it will be very familiar to Brits, Aussies, Kiwis and the inhabitants of a few other countries, it's not such a big thing in the United States. It's not exactly obscure in the US – according to Wikipedia, roughly 1.4m people play it there – but it's hardly on a par with baseball or football (of the American kind).
The word format won't have helped, either. Only eight of Wordle's 2,309 original solutions end in BY – TABBY, game #1605, was the most recent of these last month, and we've also had HOBBY (#765) and BOOBY (#54), but none of the others. And there are no other words with a GB format in the middle like that.
I still could – and probably should – have scored a four, though. My opening SANER left 139 options and I cut that to 13 with CROFT. LURID, on my third guess, was the perfect choice according to WordleBot, and left only two answers.
The trouble was, I only spotted one of them – RUMMY. If I'd have noticed that RUGBY also fit I'd definitely have played it next, if only for the personal connection. Instead, I went with the wrong answer first and then finally – with a sinking feeling – realized my mistake. I'll never be allowed back to my hometown again after this…
Yesterday's Wordle hints (game #1642)
In a different time zone where it's still Wednesday? Don't worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1642, 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 G.
G is the eighth most common starting letter, featuring in 115 Wordle answers. It's often paired with an R to make GR--- or an L to make GL---, but I'm not revealing whether that's the case today.
- 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 S.
S is really not a common ending letter at all - mainly because Wordle generally doesn't allow plurals. It's the 15th most likely letter to appear at the end of an answer.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here's an extra one for game #1642.
- Yesterday's Wordle answer is a widespread plant type.
Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #1642)
- NYT average score: 4.0
- My score: 3
- WordleBot's score: 3
- My skill score: 99
- My luck score: 75
- My start word performance: SANER (10 remaining answers)
- WordleBot's start word performance: SLATE (14)
- Tomorrow's start word: SANER
Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #1642) was… GRASS.
GRASS feels like a kind of meta Wordle, the result of multiple recent answers layered atop one another until they make a new word that's almost, but not quite, like all of the others.
Just in the past month we've had GRAVY and GRAVE, which both have the same GRA opening, and GUESS, which has the G--SS format. Go back a little further and exactly two months ago we had GROSS, which differs from this by only one vowel.
A knowledge of past Wordle answers may well have helped then, although you'd need to go back a little further for some other red herrings – GRASP, which appeared in March 2024, BRASS (September 2024) and CRASS (waaaaay back in August 2021).
A look at WordleBot's analysis of what people are playing shows all of those words featuring heavily (but mainly the older ones), but CRASH – an answer that differs by two letters – actually drew more wrong answers than any on the second guess. That has not yet been a solution – which may well point to the fact that people were ruling out the others via a list.
It definitely feels like we're now in a world where there are four ways to play the game, and therefore four standards to judge yourself against: normal or hard, and each of those with or without looking at past solutions.
I think the NYT should deal with this itself, by building past solutions into the game – just include a toggle, as with hard mode, that says 'use past answers information', then alert players if they're about to guess something that has appeared before. That way the average score could properly reflect that, rather than it just being a voluntary thing that you tell WordleBot (or don't).
I'm not yet using a past solutions list, but it wouldn't have mattered much today anyway. That's because SANER left me with only 10 solutions, and GRABS swiftly cut that to just the one, GRASS, which I played for another three.
GRABS was a calculated choice; if the S had stayed yellow, it would have pointed me to either CRASH or TRASH, while the other letters in my guess would have revealed which of the other eight words it was. I wasn't quite guaranteed a three, but it was close anyway – and I got the luck that continued my winning streak.
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 #1642, Wednesday 17 December: GRASS
- Wordle #1641, Tuesday 16 December: SEGUE
- Wordle #1640, Monday 15 December: DODGY
- Wordle #1639, Sunday 14 December: SWING
- Wordle #1638, Saturday 13 December: MISER
- Wordle #1637, Friday 12 December: TRUCK
- Wordle #1636, Thursday 11 December: GUESS
- Wordle #1635, Wednesday 10 December: ERASE
- Wordle #1634, Tuesday 9 December: SNIDE
- Wordle #1633, Monday 8 December: GRAVY
- Wordle #1632, Sunday 7 December: FLUTE
- Wordle #1631, Saturday 6 December: WAIST
- Wordle #1630, Friday 5 December: WAIST
- Wordle #1629, Thursday 4 December: TULIP
- Wordle #1628, Wednesday 3 December: HASTE
- Wordle #1627, Tuesday 2 December: CACTI
- Wordle #1626, Monday 1 December: LEACH
- Wordle #1625, Sunday 30 November: MUGGY
- Wordle #1624, Saturday 29 November: GRUFF
- Wordle #1623, Friday 28 November: COLIC
- Wordle #1622, Thursday 27 November: REMIT
- Wordle #1621, Wednesday 26 November: HOVEL
- Wordle #1620, Tuesday 25 November: PLEAD
- Wordle #1619, Monday 24 November: DOUGH
- Wordle #1618, Sunday 23 November: BUNNY
- Wordle #1617, Saturday 22 November: THICK
- Wordle #1616, Friday 21 November: VOWEL
- Wordle #1615, Thursday 20 November: GRAVE
- Wordle #1614, Wednesday 19 November: MAKER
- Wordle #1613, Tuesday 18 November: OPINE
- Wordle #1612, Monday 17 November: CLAMP
- Wordle #1611, Sunday 16 November: WIELD
- Wordle #1610, Saturday 15 November: CLUNG
- Wordle #1609, Friday 14 November: LURID
- Wordle #1608, Thursday 13 November: TINGE
- Wordle #1607, Wednesday 12 November: DEUCE
- Wordle #1606, Tuesday 11 November: GIZMO
- Wordle #1605, Monday 10 November: TABBY
- Wordle #1604, Sunday 9 November: FUGUE
- Wordle #1603, Saturday 8 November: ARISE
- Wordle #1602, Friday 7 November: PERIL
- Wordle #1601, Thursday 6 November: GUISE
- Wordle #1600, Wednesday 5 November: SHORT
- Wordle #1599, Tuesday 4 November: VENUE
- Wordle #1598, Monday 3 November: AWOKE
- Wordle #1597, Sunday 2 November: RABID
- Wordle #1596, Saturday 1 November: MOTEL
- Wordle #1595, Friday 31 October: ABHOR
- Wordle #1594, Thursday 30 October: LATHE
- Wordle #1593, Wednesday 29 October: GLARE
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 2025.
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.
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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