OK, listen up - this is not a drill. Today's Wordle answer is even tougher than yesterday's, and that was difficult enough. WordleBot, the NYT's AI helper tool, says people are solving it in an average of 4.7 guesses, which is super high, and lots of people are reporting lost streaks on Twitter.
In summary: you're going to want some Wordle hints today. So read on and I'll give you some clues for game #668 - and you can even see the answer, too, if you don't have time to play.
Want more word-based fun? My Quordle today page contains hints and answers for that, too.
SPOILER WARNING: Information about today's Wordle answers are below, so don't read on if you don't want to see them.
Marc is TechRadar’s UK Editor in Chief and has been playing Wordle for more than a year. 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 every position. His streak recently reached the 460 mark and he'll be inconsolable if he loses it. Yes, he takes it all too seriously.
Wordle hints (game #668) - 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 #668) - clue #2 - first letter
What letter does today's Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today's Wordle answer is H.
H is not a particularly common starting letter in Wordle: only 69 games begin with it, and it ranks in 15th place.
Wordle hints (game #668) - 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 #668) - clue #4 - ending letter
What letter does today's Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today's Wordle is D.
D is a fairly common letter to end a Wordle answer: it's the eighth most likely to be in that position in a solution.
Wordle hints (game #668) - clue #5 - last chance
Still looking for Wordle hints today? Don't worry, I'll give you one more for game #668.
- Today's Wordle answer means to pursue, or it's also a thing that likes to pursue.
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 #668)
Today's Wordle answer (game #668) is… HOUND.
How did you find this one, then? My guess: either very difficult and you lost your streak/scraped home with a 6/6, or not too bad at all. Which one it is may depend on your choice of the best Wordle starting words, but is more likely linked to how strategically you approached the game.
That's because today's Wordle is one of those too-many-options games we all love to hate. You know - like CATCH/WATCH/HATCH/BATCH/PATCH/MATCH or WASTE/BASTE/HASTE/PASTE.
The same consonants generally crop up at the start of all of these types of games, so many people will have been picking from B, F, M, P, H, W - or rather, from BOUND, FOUND, MOUND, POUND, HOUND and WOUND. You can also throw ROUND and SOUND into the mix, although many people have an R or S in their starting word.
But we'll get to that in a minute. First, the details. WordleBot says people are solving it in 4.7 guesses, which follows on from 4.4 for yesterday's game (see below) and 4.2 for Sunday's DWELT. That's a pretty tough run of games.
It begins with an H, which is the least common starting letter out of the six that might have led the answer today; if you played BOUND, or FOUND, before then, I understand why. But of course, it's important to note that mathematically, the H was just as likely to be the starting letter as B, F, or any of the others. It may be less common overall, but they each had a 1/6 chance of being the first letter by the time you got to the -OUND stage.
How quickly you got to that point may well have depended on what your first guess was. STARE, my opening gambit, drew a blank for the second game in succession and left me with 318 possible solutions. SLATE was similarly useless and left 308. TRACE, CARTE and CRATE - 344 for each - ditto.
Today, however, SLANT and CRANE were a bit more helpful, cutting down the options to a 'mere' 67. ADIEU, which bafflingly continues to be the most popular starting word, again came up trumps, leaving 37. That doesn't mean it's a good choice overall (it's not), but it was good today.
Yesterday I followed up my unsuccessful STARE with a similarly useless CLOUD. Today, I varied it slightly, just because I wanted to, and went with COULD. And I got lucky: green O! Green U! Green D!
I now had just six words left, and I could see right away what they were. The missing letter before the D had to be N, so I was in an -OUND trap. Or rather, it would have been if I played on hard mode. I don't, because a) I write this column, and more people play in normal mode and b) I like to win.
That meant I could do what any right thinking person would do today and play a word designed to narrow down the options.
I was helped slightly in this task by remembering that FOUND had been a past Wordle answer. It was way back in March 2022 (game #282), and I had ended up in the exact same trap, escaping on that day with a 5/6.
Today, I had an advantage: with only five words to pick from, not six, I could play WHOMP and guarantee a 4/6. If the W turned green, it would be WOUND. If the H went yellow, then HOUND, if the M then MOUND and if the P then POUND. If none of them changed color, it had to be BOUND.
Well, the H duly turned yellow and I scored my 4/6. And as an extra bonus, it took WordleBot 5/6 guesses today. Not so smart now, bot!
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday's Wordle hints (game #667)
In a different time zone where it's still Monday? Don't worry - I can give you some clues for Wordle #667, too.
- Wordle yesterday had one vowel.
- The first letter in yesterday's Wordle answer was W.
- There was one repeated letter in yesterday's Wordle.
- The last letter in yesterday's Wordle was F.
- Yesterday's Wordle answer stinks.
Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #667)
Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #667) was… WHIFF.
Right, now this is more like it. The past few games haven't been too bad - although DWELT wasn't exactly easy - but WHIFF is a properly difficult answer to find. But it's not a difficult Wordle answer in an unfair and stupid way, it's simply a tough challenge to solve, one that requires a bit of thought and some strategic play.
The first thing to note is that, unusually, only one of the letters makes it into the top 10 most common overall: the I, which ranks seventh. H is 14th, F is 19th and W just 21st out of the 26 letters. In most games, at least two and often three or four of the five letters are ranked in the top 10. Even BORAX had three.
And of course, there's a double letter here, in the form of an FF. This is not an incredibly uncommon scenario, but of the 2,309 original Wordle answers, only 20 contain a double F, so it's not exactly expected either.
Finally, W as a starting letter is pretty uncommon too: it ranks 13th, which doesn't sound too bad until you consider than it only occurs in 82 games, which is around 3.5% of the total. Certainly not something you'd plan for.
As a word, it's in relatively frequent usage; not as common as THIEF or UNDER, say, but definitely more likely to crop up in conversation than SNAFU, CARAT or, yes, BORAX.
Those uncommon letter combinations meant that very few of the best Wordle starting words were remotely helpful today. STARE, my favorite, drew a complete blank and left me with 318 possible solutions. SLATE, WordleBot's favored option, left 308. CRANE (357), SLANT (530), TRACE, CARTE and CRATE (all 344) were worse still. ADIEU, once again the most popular opening, was slightly better, at 121.
Things were about to get even worse for me, because my second guess, CLOUD, again drew a blank. This has only happened a couple of times to me before, and it's both disconcerting and panic-inducing. WordleBot told me after the game that I had actually narrowed it down from 318 to just 19 now, but I didn't know that at the time; I could just see a wall of a gray and my streak beginning to look vulnerable.
I did turn up a letter with my third guess, NIMBY, but only one of them - and only a yellow I. That was arguably the least useful letter I could have got, because with the other vowels all ruled out by now, and with Y joining them, there had to be an I in there somewhere! What I really wanted was a consonant or two (or preferably four), but I was going to have to wait for that.
However, with so many letters now ruled out, I didn't have many remaining options. In fact, I could find only one - and it ended up being the answer.
My reasoning was straightforward enough: with only one vowel in the game, I was almost certainly looking at a consonant-consonant-I-consonant-consonant pattern. It was possible that the answer started or ended with I, but unlikely; maybe if an N or C had remained that might have been the case (as in ICING), but you don't generally get words that start or end IPI-- or IKI-- or IVI--. Four consonants together, meanwhile, is very uncommon in general and not really possible with the letters I had remaining.
So I looked for words that could go together at the start and only really found WH and PH. At the end, meanwhile, there were even fewer choices; I was fairly certain this would be a double letter. After a couple of minutes I spotted WHIFF and, fairly confident by now, played it for a WordleBot-equaling 4/6.
One final note: quite a few people played WHIZZ rather than WHIFF at this stage. Strangely, WordleBot didn't think it was one of the options today, but if I'd have thought of it, I would have done. Would I have chosen it over WHIFF? Probably not - I have a natural aversion to Zs in Wordle. But I can understand why others did.
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 #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
- Wordle #622, Friday 3 March: SQUAT
- Wordle #621, Thursday 2 March: ABOVE
- Wordle #620, Wednesday 1 March: MOOSE
- Wordle #619, Tuesday 28 February: POLKA
- Wordle #618, Monday 27 February: WORSE
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 (opens in new tab) or the New York Times' Crossword app (iOS (opens in new tab) / Android (opens in new tab)), 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.
