5 letters · starts with S
The Wordle answer for today is at the top of this page, with the hints kept separate. Wordle is the game every other game on this site is measured against: five letters, six guesses, one word a day, and coloured tiles that tell you which letters are right and where. Josh Wardle's game counts its puzzles from 19 June 2021, when the answer was CIGAR; the New York Times bought it in January 2022; and NYT's puzzle data numbers 2 September 2026 as Wordle 1,901 and 11 October 2026 as Wordle 1,940.
Today's solution is on the Wordle answer today page. If you'd rather be nudged, the Wordle hint today page stages the vowel count, repeated letters and first letter separately. And if you're mid-game with a pattern that won't resolve, the Wordle solver takes your guesses and ranks what's left.
The rest of this page is the part most Wordle guides skip: the numbers. Which letters actually appear in answers, how much each opener narrows the list, what hard mode really costs, and how the answers have changed under the Times — all measured on the word lists in NYT's own game code and on the answers HintSheet has published.
How the colours work — precisely
Green: right letter, right position. Yellow: right letter, wrong position. Grey: the letter is not in the word — *with one exception that catches almost everyone*. If your guess contains a letter twice and the answer contains it once, only one tile is coloured and the other is grey. The grey tile does not mean the letter is absent; it means there is no *second* copy. Wikipedia's summary of the rules puts it the same way: repeated letters are marked green or yellow only if the answer contains them more than once.
Every guess must be a valid five-letter word, and "valid" has a precise meaning: the game's code ships a list of 14,855 accepted words. The answer is chosen separately. The same code carries the original 2,309-word answer list, starting with CIGAR, but since Tracy Bennett became editor in November 2022 the daily word is picked by hand: 15 of the 41 answers from 1 September to 11 October 2026 were not on that original list. Guessing words that can never be answers is legal, which is the basis of every letter-testing strategy.
Which letters matter
Counting letters across the 2,309-word answer list in NYT's game code gives a clear ranking. E appears in 45.6% of answers, A in 39.2%, R in 36.2%, O in 29.1% and T in 28.9%, followed by I, L, S, N, U, C and Y. S is in 26.7% of answers but ends only 1.6% of them, because the list avoids plurals; it is by far the most common first letter (15.8%). E is the most common last letter (18.3%), with Y close behind (15.8%). A is spread over positions two and three almost equally.
Openers are applications of that table. We scored every opener by the average number of answers from that list still possible after its colour pattern; lower is better. The differences among strong openers are small, and consistency beats cleverness.
| Opener | Vowels | Why it works | Average answers remaining after guess 1 |
|---|---|---|---|
| SLATE | A, E | S first, E last, L and T in common slots | 71.3 |
| TRACE | A, E | Produces the most distinct colour patterns of any accepted word (150) | 73.9 |
| CRANE | A, E | R and N in strong positions; C tests a common first letter | 78.7 |
| ADIEU | A, E, I, U | Four vowels — finds vowels, tests one consonant | 123.4 |
| AUDIO | A, I, O, U | Popular; tests one consonant | 183.2 |
The second guess is where games are won
After the opener, the natural move is to chase a yellow: move the yellow letter and keep the greens. That is intuitive and often slow. The alternative second guess tests *five new letters*, because guess two exists to shrink the candidate list, not to win. SLATE followed by CRONY covers ten of the twelve most common answer letters (all but I and U). Measured over the 2,309-word answer list in NYT's game code, the pair leaves an average of 5.1 possible answers, against 71.3 after SLATE alone.
The exception is when guess one returns two or more greens. Then the candidate list is already small and the yellow-chasing instinct is right. The Wordle solver shows you how many candidates remain after each guess, so you can see whether you are in a test-letters or a solve-it situation.
Hard mode, honestly
The game's settings describe hard mode in one line: any revealed hints must be used in subsequent guesses, and it can only be switched on at the start of a round. It does not make the word harder; it removes the test-five-new-letters strategy. The cost is real on one kind of puzzle: a family of answers that differ in a single letter. The original answer list has nine words ending -IGHT (EIGHT, FIGHT, LIGHT, MIGHT, NIGHT, RIGHT, SIGHT, TIGHT, WIGHT), eight ending -OUND and seven ending -ATCH. In normal mode you can test several first letters in one guess; in hard mode every guess must keep the found ending, so you test one letter at a time and can run out. If your goal is a long streak, normal mode is the safer setting. If you like the constraint, hard mode is a fair test of discipline, and the Times awards a Hard Mode badge for a solve with it on.
The repeated-letter problem, worked
A third of the original answers repeat a letter (747 of 2,309), and so did 10 of the 41 answers from 1 September to 11 October 2026, from RULER to PEEVE. Here is why they cause trouble, and what to do.
Suppose the answer is ROBOT and you open with SLATE: every tile grey except the T (yellow). Second guess CRONY: R yellow, O yellow. You now know R, O and T are in the word and not where you put them. The instinct is to try words with one R, one O, one T. A guess with two Os, such as TROOP, would show you the double — but it is tempting to avoid it because "I already know O is in the word". The efficient third guess *contains a repeated candidate letter*, because if the answer has a double, no single-letter guess will ever tell you.
Rule of thumb: if you have three confirmed letters after two guesses and the remaining candidates don't resolve, consider that the answer repeats one of them, and test the repeat on guess three, not guess five.
| Pattern | Share of answers | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| No repeated letter | 67.6% of the list; 31 of 41 recent | SLATE, CRANE, UNCAP |
| One letter twice | 29.8% of the list; 9 of 41 recent | ROBOT, RIVER, SLOOP |
| Two pairs or a triple | 2.5% of the list; 1 of 41 recent (PEEVE) | GEESE, MAMMA, PEEVE |
Wordle beyond English fluency
For a player whose first language is not English, the vocabulary is the constraint, not the logic. Two adjustments help. First, use the solver's candidate list as a vocabulary check rather than a cheat — if a word you don't know ranks first, look it up after the game. Second, favour openers made of the letters that are common in *these* answers — E, A, R, O, T, L, S — rather than letters common in your first language; the frequency figures on this page come from Wordle's own answer list.
Wikipedia notes that Wordle now follows American spelling and that the Times removed some British variants, such as FIBRE, from the answer list. If a candidate looks British, it is unlikely to be the answer.
What the Times changed about the answer list
The original game shipped with a fixed, ordered list of answers. According to Wikipedia, the Times removed words it considered offensive or insensitive, and some British spellings, after buying the game in January 2022 — seven had gone from the original 2,315 by July 2022 — and in November 2022 appointed Tracy Bennett as Wordle's first editor, responsible for choosing the daily word. NYT's puzzle data credits her on every answer in our archive, and the game displays "Edited by" from puzzle 506 onwards. The practical consequences show up in the 41 answers from 1 September to 11 October 2026: 15 of them (REMIX, BEIGE, NIFTY, RITZY, UNCAP among them) were not on the original 2,309-word list in the game's code, only one ended in S (FOCUS, not a plural), and none was a repeat of an earlier answer in the window. The old trick of reading the next word off the list no longer works, which is why this site reads the puzzle data each day.
The Times also launched WordleBot in April 2022, an analysis tool that scores each game for skill and luck. HintSheet's solver is simpler: it filters a word list by your colours and ranks what's left by common letters, as its own page explains.
A note on 'hints' versus 'answer' pages
People arrive at Wordle pages wanting different things at different points in the game. Someone at guess one wants a vowel count. Someone at guess five wants the word. Putting both on one page spoils the first person, which is why HintSheet keeps them apart: the hints page stages the vowel count, whether a letter repeats, three short letter clues and the first letter, each behind its own reveal, with the word last. Nothing on the hints page shows the answer until you ask for it; nothing on the answer page makes you click through.
Wordle myths, checked against the data
Things that get repeated about Wordle, checked against the 2,309-word answer list in NYT's game code and the 41 answers from 1 September to 11 October 2026.
- "The answer is never a plural." Regular -S plurals are absent: only 36 of the 2,309 original answers end in S, all of them words like FOCUS, BONUS and GLASS. Irregular plurals do appear — GEESE and TEETH are on the list.
- "Words with double letters are rare." About one original answer in three repeats a letter, and 10 of the 41 recent ones did. They are under-guessed, not rare.
- "The Times only uses the original list." Not since an editor took over: 15 of the last 41 answers were not on it.
- "Any opener is as good as any other." Not quite. By our measure SLATE leaves 71 answers on average and AUDIO 183, but the gap between SLATE, TRACE and CRANE is only seven answers, so pick one and stop optimising.
- "Hard mode is for experts." Hard mode is a constraint, not a harder word; it mostly punishes the -IGHT, -OUND and -ATCH families.
What the answers look like across a month
The answers HintSheet published from 1 September to 11 October 2026, set beside the original list. Six weeks is a small sample, so treat the recent column as a sketch.
| Feature | Recent 41 answers | Original 2,309-word list |
|---|---|---|
| Starts with S | 8 (20%) | 15.8% |
| Ends with E | 7 (17%) | 18.3% |
| Ends with Y | 11 (27%): DRYLY, ELEGY, NIFTY… | 15.8% |
| Exactly two vowels | 25 (61%) | 57.9% |
| Three or more vowels | 2 (5%) | 9.9% |
| Repeated letter | 10 (24%) | 32.4% |
Reader questions
"Is the answer the same worldwide?" Yes, one word per date for everyone; when you see it depends on your device's date, so compare puzzle numbers if you are in different time zones.
"Can I guess any five-letter word?" Only words in the game's accepted list — 14,855 of them in the current code. Many proper nouns are not on it: ARIES, for instance, is rejected.
"What was the first Wordle answer?" CIGAR, dated 19 June 2021 in NYT's puzzle data.
Glossary
Terms as used on this site.
- Opener — your first guess.
- Candidate — a word still consistent with all feedback.
- Test word — a guess chosen to eliminate letters rather than to be the answer.
- Hard mode — revealed hints must be used.
A weekly rhythm
Wordle has no published difficulty curve. The closest thing is a remark in the Times' 2024 article launching Strands, which said Bennett varies the difficulty of Wordle puzzles within a week; Wikipedia adds that she has described reviewing each day's word for suitability. The Times has not said which days are harder, and six weeks of answers is too few to find a pattern, so plan for variance rather than a schedule. The days that stretch to five or six guesses tend to involve the same features in any week: a repeated letter, a crowded ending such as -IGHT, or a letter like Y doing a vowel's job (DRYLY on 10 September had no A, E, I, O or U at all).
Frequently asked questions
What time does Wordle reset?
At midnight on your own device's clock — the game loads the puzzle for your local date. HintSheet publishes each date's word at midnight US Eastern, so players west of New York can see it here before their own reset.
Can the Wordle answer be a plural?
Regular plurals ending in -S aren't used: only 36 of the 2,309 original answers end in S, and none is a simple plural. Irregular plurals such as GEESE and TEETH are on the list.
Why did a letter show grey when it's in the word?
You guessed that letter twice and the answer has it once. The second tile is grey to say there is no second copy.
What is the best Wordle starting word?
It depends on the measure. Over the 2,309-word original answer list, ROATE and RAISE leave the fewest answers on average (about 60), while TRACE, SALET and CRATE split the list into the most distinct colour patterns. SLATE and CRANE are close behind on both. What matters more is a strong second guess.
Is the HintSheet Wordle solver cheating?
It's a tool. Use it to check a stuck pattern or see how many words are left. If you'd rather keep the game pure, stick to the hints page.
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