Sunday’s Wordle is every bit as difficult as yesterday’s, and that one was hardly child’s play. In fact, WordleBot says today’s has an average score of 4.4 guesses, which places it on a par with Friday’s KAYAK – one of the toughest we’ve had in weeks.
You definitely might want some Wordle hints for it, so read on for a selection of clues to guide you in the right direction. And if you don’t have time to play at all, you can see the answer, too. Want more word-based fun? My Quordle today page contains hints and answers for that game.
SPOILER WARNING: Information about today’s Wordle answers are below, so don’t read on if you don’t want to see them.
Wordle hints (game #673) – clue #1 – Vowels
How many vowels does today’s Wordle have?
• Wordle today has two vowels*.
* 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 #673) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is U.
U is not a particularly common starting letter in Wordle, with only 33 answers beginning with it. It ranks 20th in this regard, and is the least common vowel to start an answer.
Wordle hints (game #673) – 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 #673) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is 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.
Wordle hints (game #673) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for Wordle hints today? Don’t worry, I’ll give you one more for game #673.
- Today’s Wordle answer is a means of opening something.
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 #673)
Today’s Wordle answer (game #673) is… UNZIP.
The Wordle gods – by which we mean the New York Times and the game’s editor, Tracy Bennett – appear to have it in for us right now. UNZIP is the sixth difficult answer in the past eight days, a sequence that started with DWELT last Saturday and includes WHIFF, HOUND, KAYAK and then yesterday’s BROKE. Each of those had an average score of at least 4.2 and today’s reaches the heady heights of 4.4.
What’s the problem here, then? Well, the Z doesn’t help. You might expect Z to be the least common letter in the game, but it’s actually only fourth worst, with Q, X and J below it. But it’s still rare to get one in Wordle, though: there are just 40 of them among the game’s 2,309 original answers. It’s been ages since we last saw one: game #585, MAIZE, back in January.
It’s not the only uncommon thing about today’s answer, either. U is a pretty rare starting letter, with just 33 games that begin with one. Oh, and a letter P at the end is pretty unlikely; there are some 56 of these.
My game started off badly, with no letters and still 318 possible solutions. I imagine many other people suffered a similar fate. SLATE, WordleBot’s pick of the best Wordle starting words, left 308 possibles, while TRACE, CRATE and CARTE all left 344. CRANE was a little better (80), and the most popular start word, ADIEU, was pretty good today: just 30 remaining for anyone who played that.
My go-to second word after a blank first guess is always either CLOUD or COULD. I went with the latter today and was disappointed to get just a single yellow U. I now had 30 possible answers, and spent a little time working out what some of them could be.
I didn’t find all 30, but I came up with about 20, many of which ended with a Y: FUNNY, BUNNY, FUNKY, PUNKY, HUNKY, MUGGY, BUGGY, MUMMY, PUPPY, BUMPY, JUNKY and so on. I also had a few that started with a U, including UNZIP, UNHIP, UNPIN and UNIFY. The Y route seemed the most likely, so I played FUNKY next. WordleBot liked it, but it only gave me a yellow N to go with the still-yellow U.
I was now down to just three possible answers, though: UNZIP, UNHIP and UNPIN. For some reason I felt like UNHIP was less likely to be an actual answer than the other two. Playing UNPIN would have been risky, though, because if the answer was one of the UNZIP or UNHIP, I’d still have had a 50/50 left and might end up with a 6/6.
UNZIP therefore made the most sense: I’d be guaranteed a 5/6 at worst this way. As it happens, it was the answer, so I escaped with a just-below-average 4/6.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #672)
In a different time zone where it’s still Saturday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #672, too.
- Wordle yesterday had two vowels.
- The first letter in yesterday’s Wordle answer was B.
- There were no repeated letters in yesterday’s Wordle.
- The last letter in yesterday’s Wordle was E.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer has no money.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #672)
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #672) was… BROKE.
This was another difficult one in what continues to be a tough patch for Wordle. In the past seven days, five of the Wordles have had an average score of 4.2 or higher, with today’s hitting that exact figure. Admittedly, that makes it a fair bit easier than yesterday’s puzzle (see below), let alone Tuesday’s HOUND, but it’s still a potentially tricky one overall.
It’s not immediately clear why, though. The end letter is an E – which is the most likely letter to be found there – and the starting letter is a B, which is third behind S and C. There’s also an R and an O, both of which are common in Wordle answers. Sure, there’s also a K in it – not such a common letter – but at least it’s in its second most likely position, just before the end letter.
Rather than the letters being unusual, or the word being obscure, I think today’s puzzle is difficult purely because there are lots of similar options. The -RO-E pattern is pretty common in Wordle, with the likes of DRONE, DROVE, GROVE, PROVE, ERODE, FROZE and TROVE all being examples. If you didn’t have the O, there were far more still: DRIVE and BRINE and BRIBE and CRIME or PRUNE and PRUDE and CRUDE.
That’s borne out by the results for some of the best Wordle starting words today: SLATE, WordleBot’s favorite, left 123 options today. SLANT left 530. ADIEU, the most popular, was at 241. That said, others weren’t so bad. My choice, STARE, reduced the possible solutions list down to 55, while CRANE (29) and TRACE/CRATE (both 25) were better still.
I could see there were too many options for me to score a 2/6 today, so I didn’t attempt a win on my second guess. Instead, I tried to find out where my yellow R was and left out the green E in order that I could play another letter. I don’t think my choice of CRIMP was particularly good: WordleBot only gave me 78/99 for skill, and said that POUND would have been much better. It was right (of course) – POUND would have left just three answers, whereas CRIMP left me with six.
I found all six of these easily enough: DRONE, DROVE, ERODE, BROKE, GROVE and FROZE. The problem was, all were equally likely and if I guessed wrong here I could easily be looking at a 5/6. And, to be honest, I didn’t play well from here. I got lucky in the end, but really my strategy was not the best – the result of me playing late at night when I wasn’t thinking straight.
The best option would have been DROVE: if I’d played that, and it was wrong, I’d have had a 50/50 between FROZE and BROKE, and could have still scored a 4/6. But for some reason I instead decided to play BODGE, even though this could easily have left me with three possible answers in DROVE, DRONE and ERODE.
As it was, fortune favored me today: BODGE gave me a green B and confirmed that the answer was BROKE. I scored a 4/6, but didn’t particularly deserve it – hopefully tomorrow will be better!
Wordle answers: The past 50
I’ve been playing Wordle every day for more than a year 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 #672, Saturday 22 April: BROKE
- Wordle #671, Friday 21 April: KAYAK
- Wordle #670, Thursday 20 April: PLATE
- Wordle #669, Wednesday 19 April: THUMP
- Wordle #668, Tuesday 18 April: HOUND
- Wordle #667, Monday 17 April: WHIFF
- Wordle #666, Sunday 16 April: DWELT
- Wordle #665, Saturday 15 April: AGONY
- Wordle #664, Friday 14 April: THIEF
- Wordle #663, Thursday 13 April: CARAT
- Wordle #662, Wednesday 12 April: BORAX
- Wordle #661, Tuesday 11 April: QUALM
- Wordle #660, Monday 10 April: UNDER
- Wordle #659, Sunday 9 April: SNAFU
- Wordle #658, Saturday 8 April: LEDGE
- Wordle #657, Friday 7 April: LOCUS
- Wordle #656, Thursday 6 April: LEAFY
- Wordle #655, Wednesday 5 April: SMASH
- Wordle #654, Tuesday 4 April: RATIO
- Wordle #653, Monday 3 April: FLORA
- Wordle #652, Sunday 2 April: STOCK
- Wordle #651, Saturday 1 April: MARCH
- Wordle #650, Friday 31 March: EVERY
- Wordle #649, Thursday 30 March: BREAD
- Wordle #648, Wednesday 29 March: BESET
- Wordle #647, Tuesday 28 March: HURRY
- Wordle #646, Monday 27 March: GUANO
- Wordle #645, Sunday 26 March: UNTIE
- Wordle #644, Saturday 25 March: VOTER
- Wordle #643, Friday 24 March: GROUT
- Wordle #642, Thursday 23 March: STAID
- Wordle #641, Wednesday 22 March: DUVET
- Wordle #640, Tuesday 21 March: TOUGH
- Wordle #639, Monday 20 March: GLOVE
- Wordle #638, Sunday 19 March: CREDO
- Wordle #637, Saturday 18 March: YACHT
- Wordle #636, Friday 17 March: MEALY
- Wordle #635, Thursday 16 March: CIDER
- Wordle #634, Wednesday 15 March: SWEEP
- Wordle #633, Tuesday 14 March: SURLY
- Wordle #632, Monday 13 March: BLAME
- Wordle #631, Sunday 12 March: BIRTH
- Wordle #630, Saturday 11 March: EMAIL
- Wordle #629, Friday 10 March: REVEL
- Wordle #628, Thursday 9 March: WHERE
- Wordle #627, Wednesday 8 March: REGAL
- Wordle #626, Tuesday 7 March: HORSE
- Wordle #625, Monday 6 March: PINKY
- Wordle #624, Sunday 5 March: TOXIC
- Wordle #623, Saturday 4 March: TREND
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 2023.
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.
