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.
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 #1686) - 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 #1686) - clue #2 - first letter
What letter does today's Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today's Wordle answer is J.
J is the least common letter overall in Wordle, but is only the fourth least likely starting letter. That's because it begins 20 out of the 27 answers it appears in (Y, Z and X are all less common starting letters).
Wordle hints (game #1686) - 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 #1686) - clue #4 - ending letter
What letter does today's Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today's Wordle is O.
O is a middling ending letter. It ranks 12th in this regard, and finishes 58 Wordle answers in total.
Wordle hints (game #1686) - clue #5 - last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here's an extra one for game #1686.
- Today's Wordle answer is a very large thing.
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 #1686)
- NYT average score: 4.6
- My score: 5
- WordleBot's score: 4
- My skill score: 74
- My luck score: 37
- My start word performance: SANER (304 remaining answers)
- WordleBot's start word performance: SLATE (315)
- Tomorrow's start word: SANER
Today's Wordle answer (game #1686) is… JUMBO.
Before I talk about today's game, I'll draw your attention to the fact that Wordle will enter a new era next week when it begins repeating answers. Yes, it's really happening.
I saw this news yesterday, after I'd written that day's column, so didn't discuss it then – but I'm very eager to dig into it now, so feel free to share your comments on it below.
I've also created a poll to get a general idea of what people think of the change, and would love it if you could cast your votes. I'll report back next week on the results.
With news of that magnitude to digest, today's game could easily have been overshadowed. However, that's far from the case because it's an interesting game in its own right.
WordleBot says it has an average score of 4.6, which makes it the toughest since WAXEN nearly two weeks ago, and it's one of those rare Wordles that features a J.
In fact, J is such a rare letter in Wordle that it's easy to forget it exists at all – or at least that's my excuse for a monumentally silly mistake that directly led to my score of five rather than the four that I should have got.
Things went well enough until the fourth guess. I had a poor start, admittedly, when SANER drew a blank and left 304 options, but CLOUT performed admirably and cut that vast word pool down to only five: DOUGH, BOUGH, BUXOM, GUMBO and JUMBO.
Of those five, I thought of three – the first two, plus GUMBO. I dismissed GUMBO right away, because that was the solution a couple of weeks ago, and answers haven't started repeating yet. That gave me a choice of DOUGH or BOUGH, and I went with the latter for no particular reason.
I fully expected either all five letters to turn green, or all but the first. Instead, the B, O and U went yellow. What was going on?
Clearly it couldn't be DOUGH now, but after a very, very long look at the board I decided the answer might still start with a D – because DUMBO fit. Now, obviously this was a ridiculous thought because it was always very unlikely to be the solution. But I simply couldn't think of anything else.
The problem was that J, which I simply hadn't considered at any stage. That changed when I played DUMBO and saw the final four letters go green, at which point I realized what a jumbo mistake I'd made and rather shamefacedly played it for a five.
Yesterday's Wordle hints (game #1685)
In a different time zone where it's still Thursday? Don't worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1685, 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 F.
F is a very common starting letter in Wordle. It ranks seventh behind only S, C, B, T, P and A and overall there are 135 solutions that begin with this letter.
- 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 Y.
Y is the second most common ending letter in the game, behind only E. In total, 364 Wordle answers end with a Y.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here's an extra one for game #1685.
- Yesterday's Wordle answer is unreliable – or a type of pastry.
Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #1685)
- NYT average score: 4.0
- My score: 4
- WordleBot's score: 3
- My skill score: 98
- My luck score: 42
- My start word performance: SANER (127 remaining answers)
- WordleBot's start word performance: SLATE (22)
- Tomorrow's start word: SANER
Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #1685) was… FLAKY.
FLAKY is one of those words that looks like it should have an E in it, but doesn't (although it is listed as a variant spelling in most dictionaries). It's a middle-of-the-road Wordle answer, with no particularly interesting features – although it is playing slightly harder than normal, with an average score of 4.0. That's probably due to the presence of two slightly less common letters in F and K, and the fact that only L and A feature in many start words.
Both of those letters appear in SLATE, of course, and that led to a good start for WordleBot and anyone/anything else that opens with that word, because it left only 22 options.
My SANER was considerably higher at 127, but I cut that to five with my follow-up of PLAIT.
I'd love to say that I found all five of them, but that would be a lie, because I missed LLAMA (understandable) and CLACK (slightly less so). I did find BLACK, FLACK and FLAKY though – and went with the first of those purely because I know that most valid colors are among the answers – we've had GREEN (game #877), MAUVE (#1261), WHITE (#1645) and, er, PINKY (#625) so far.
Unfortunately we've also had BLACK (#295), but obviously I didn't remember that. I didn't get it right then, but it ruled out FLACK and the two words I hadn't thought of, and left FLAKY as the only possible solution.
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 #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
- Wordle #1677, Wednesday 21 January: CUBIC
- Wordle #1676, Tuesday 20 January: SULLY
- Wordle #1675, Monday 19 January: WAXEN
- Wordle #1674, Sunday 18 January: SUMAC
- Wordle #1673, Saturday 17 January: FIERY
- Wordle #1672, Friday 16 January: RACER
- Wordle #1671, Thursday 15 January: CHASM
- Wordle #1670, Wednesday 14 January: AVOID
- Wordle #1669, Tuesday 13 January: GUMBO
- Wordle #1668, Monday 12 January: TRIAL
- Wordle #1667, Sunday 11 January: QUARK
- Wordle #1666, Saturday 10 January: MANIC
- Wordle #1665, Friday 9 January: EIGHT
- Wordle #1664, Thursday 8 January: BLAST
- Wordle #1663, Wednesday 7 January: PECAN
- Wordle #1662, Tuesday 6 January: OOMPH
- Wordle #1661, Monday 5 January: FILLY
- Wordle #1660, Sunday 4 January: POSSE
- Wordle #1659, Saturday 3 January: SITAR
- Wordle #1658, Friday 2 January: PROOF
- Wordle #1657, Thursday 1 January: FABLE
- Wordle #1656, Wednesday 31 December: SIREN
- Wordle #1655, Tuesday 30 December: DECOR
- Wordle #1654, Monday 29 December: FRUIT
- Wordle #1653, Sunday 28 December: ABBOT
- Wordle #1652, Saturday 27 December: BATCH
- Wordle #1651, Friday 26 December: SPEED
- Wordle #1650, Thursday 25 December: PRISM
- Wordle #1649, Wednesday 24 December: SPOOL
- Wordle #1648, Tuesday 23 December: GLINT
- Wordle #1647, Monday 22 December: CONCH
- Wordle #1646, Sunday 21 December: QUILT
- Wordle #1645, Saturday 20 December: WHITE
- Wordle #1644, Friday 19 December: MYRRH
- Wordle #1643, Thursday 18 December: RUGBY
- 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
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.
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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