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 NYT Strands today and NYT Connections today pages for my 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.
Wordle hints (game #1252) - 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 #1252) - clue #2 - first letter
What letter does today's Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today's Wordle answer is P.
P is a very common first letter among Wordle answers. It's the fifth most common in the alphabet and begins 141 solutions in total.
Wordle hints (game #1252) - 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 #1252) - clue #4 - ending letter
What letter does today's Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today's Wordle is 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.
Wordle hints (game #1252) - clue #5 - last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here's an extra one for game #1252.
- Today's Wordle answer is something precious.
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 #1252)
- NYT average score: 3.5
- My score: 4
- WordleBot's score: 3
- Best start word performance*: PLANE, PLACE, PLATE, PARSE (1 remaining answer)
- My start word performance: CHORE (35)
* From WordleBot's Top 20 start words
Today's Wordle answer (game #1252) is… PEARL.
It's another low-scoring day today. Or should that be high scoring? Probably both, given that people are getting good scores by getting low scores. Anyway, the average today is 3.5, the same as for yesterday's SPINE (see below), and I'm not in the slightest surprised.
PEARL has four ultra-common letters, plus one – P – that is only ranked in the middle overall (15th) but that's the fifth most likely to start an answer. If you didn't expect that, consider how often it precedes an R or L for PRIDE or PRONG or PLUMB or PLANK and so on.
It doesn't do that here, instead being followed by an E – which as everyone knows by now is the most common letter of all. A is only just behind it and R third, so merely playing the odds here will probably have worked out just fine.
Indeed, that's evident in the results for WordleBot's top 20 start words. Thirteen of them – CRANE, SLATE, TRACE, CRATE, PLATE, STARE, LEAST, STALE, PARSE, SNARE, TRADE, PLANE and PLACE – left fewer than 10 possible solutions today, while the P-starters among them all left only a single option. Even my random start word, CHORE, was not a disaster (for once), reducing the options to 35.
Sadly, I was unable to turn that into a three. I deliberated for a while as to what to play next, and decided to go with DERBY. This was based on the green R and yellow E that I had suggesting an --RRY answer such as BERRY, MERRY, FERRY or TERRY, an ERY ending for EVERY, EMERY, QUERY or LEERY, or an -EARY word such as TEARY or WEARY. I did have a few others, including BEARD and WEIRD, so DERBY seemed to tick a lot of boxes, letter-wise.
It worked well enough but still left five words: LEARN, PEARL, REARM, TETRA and PETRI. And – full disclosure – I only found the first two of those. In my defence, I think the other three are a lot less likely (though not impossible) to be actual answers, so I'm not beating myself up too much for playing LEARN next.
It wasn't right, of course, but it did leave PEARL as the only possible answer, so I ended up with my starting-to-become-customary score of four.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday's Wordle hints (game #1251)
In a different time zone where it's still Thursday? Don't worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1251, too.
- Wordle yesterday had 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).
- 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 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 E.
E is the most common letter to end a Wordle answer by far. That's one of the reasons why many of the best start words, including SLATE, CRANE, CRATE and STARE, all end with one.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here's an extra one for game #1251.
- Yesterday's Wordle answer is a part of a book or a body.
Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #1251)
- NYT average score: 3.5
- My score: 4
- WordleBot's score: 3
- Best start word performance*: PLANE (2 remaining answers)
- My start word performance: BONUS (64)
* From WordleBot's Top 20 start words
Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #1251) was… SPINE.
What do you get if you take the most common starting letter and the most common ending? The most common starting-and-ending combination, of course. And also, generally, a very easy Wordle answer.
I've crunched the numbers here, because I'm an absolute nerd when it comes to this kind of thing, and can report that among the 35 Wordle answers to have the S---E format, the average score is 3.64 – against 3.96 for the game as a whole. That may not sound like a big difference, but in Wordle terms it really, really is.
I say that 35 answers have had that format, but I should clarify that those are the ones I have an average score for; there have been 44 in total, with the other nine appearing before WordleBot launched in April 2022. There are a total of 72 of these words among the original 2,309 solutions, so we still have many more to come – and therefore many more blessedly easy days.
SPINE is easy even in this context, with an average of 3.5 at the time of writing. The fact that I could only score a 4/6 was therefore all the more disappointing.
I began well enough, with my random opener BONUS leaving 64 answers. That's not an amazing result, but hardly terrible either – albeit a way behind CRANE, which left 13 options.
I followed that with SLANT, which was "a wonderful choice" but also "a bit unlucky", according to WordleBot. This left me eight words still, but on the plus side it turned my yellow S and N green and gave me a clear idea of what the format was.
Unfortunately that format had several solutions: SHINE, SPINE, SWINE, SPINY, SHINY, SPEND, SCENE and SWING, all of which I found; it's not too difficult finding words in this situation, because there are only a limited number of letters that can follow an S at the start.
I needed a word that would narrow down the answers and guarantee me a solve in four, and I got it in the form of WHITE. This would give me the W for SWING, H for SHINE or SHINY, E to choose between those, and so on. Assuming I hadn't missed any answers, I'd definitely solve it on the next guess.
For once, I hadn't: WHITE gave me the green I and E that, together with the other letters being ruled out, pointed the way to SPINE, so I scored yet another four.
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 #1251, Thursday 21 November: SPINE
- Wordle #1250, Wednesday 20 November: NICHE
- Wordle #1249, Tuesday 19 November: GOING
- Wordle #1248, Monday 18 November: FRAIL
- Wordle #1247, Sunday 17 November: TALLY
- Wordle #1246, Saturday 16 November: VISOR
- Wordle #1245, Friday 15 November: TACKY
- Wordle #1244, Thursday 14 November: UVULA
- Wordle #1243, Wednesday 13 November: PRIMP
- Wordle #1242, Tuesday 12 November: FLOWN
- Wordle #1241, Monday 11 November: STOIC
- Wordle #1240, Sunday 10 November: INNER
- Wordle #1239, Saturday 9 November: SWELL
- Wordle #1238, Friday 8 November: READY
- Wordle #1237, Thursday 7 November: EVENT
- Wordle #1236, Wednesday 6 November: TRULY
- Wordle #1235, Tuesday 5 November: OCTET
- Wordle #1234, Monday 4 November: VINYL
- Wordle #1233, Sunday 3 November: BLAZE
- Wordle #1232, Saturday 2 November: SNOOP
- Wordle #1231, Friday 1 November: SIXTH
- Wordle #1230, Thursday 31 October: WEIRD
- Wordle #1229, Wednesday 30 October: EASEL
- Wordle #1228, Tuesday 29 October: TUNIC
- Wordle #1227, Monday 28 October: BAWDY
- Wordle #1226, Sunday 27 October: SANDY
- Wordle #1225, Saturday 26 October: WREAK
- Wordle #1224, Friday 25 October: FROWN
- Wordle #1223, Thursday 24 October: BOSSY
- Wordle #1222, Wednesday 23 October: GOOFY
- Wordle #1221, Tuesday 22 October: SHOUT
- Wordle #1220, Monday 21 October: SPOON
- Wordle #1219, Sunday 20 October: DICEY
- Wordle #1218, Saturday 19 October: FIBER
- Wordle #1217, Friday 18 October: STINT
- Wordle #1216, Thursday 17 October: HALVE
- Wordle #1215, Wednesday 16 October: GRANT
- Wordle #1214, Tuesday 15 October: CORER
- Wordle #1213, Monday 14 October: GAMUT
- Wordle #1212, Sunday 13 October: PRONE
- Wordle #1211, Saturday 12 October: STAIN
- Wordle #1210, Friday 11 October: GUSTY
- Wordle #1209, Thursday 10 October: CARVE
- Wordle #1208, Wednesday 9 October: MOMMY
- Wordle #1207, Tuesday 8 October: JOINT
- Wordle #1206, Monday 7 October: FLOUR
- Wordle #1205, Sunday 6 October: LAGER
- Wordle #1204, Saturday 5 October: MINER
- Wordle #1203, Friday 4 October: TITLE
- Wordle #1202, Thursday 3 October: WAGON
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.
