Wordle answers archive

October 2026 (19)

September 2026 (30)

Letters that showed up most

Counted once per answer (so the two Rs in RULER count once), here is how many of the 41 answers contained each of the twelve most common letters. The hub's ranking, built from the full answer list, puts E, A, R, O and T at the top. This window agrees on E and R, and pushes S and Y well above where most opener advice expects them.

Two readings of the table matter for openers. First, Y belongs on any shortlist of letters to test early, but only in the last slot, as the next sections show. Second, A, the letter so many openers are built around, sat level with I, T and Y on 11 answers. Over these six weeks, an opener leaning on E, S and R would have found a letter in more answers than one leaning on A.

S is everywhere except the end

S appeared in 17 of the 41 answers, second only to E, yet only one answer ended in S: FOCUS, which is not a plural. That fits the rule described on the hub, that the Times avoids plural -S answers. S showed up at the front instead. Eight answers began with it (SOUPY, SNOWY, SHONE, STOKE, SLOOP, SCUBA, SHACK, STREW), more than any other first letter, with R next on five (REMIX, RULER, RINSE, RIVER, RITZY).

The practical upshot is simple. An opener with S in the first slot is earning its keep; an S parked in the fifth slot almost never will. If your opener ends in S, you are spending a tile on a position this window filled with S exactly once.

Slot two was the vowel slot. Twenty-five of the 41 answers had a vowel in second position (I seven times, O six, E five, A four, U three), while only four answers started with a vowel at all: ASTER, ELEGY, USURY and UNCAP. Two consonants opened the other 12 answers, with SH and ST twice each and BL, DR, TH, SN, SL, TR, SC and PR once. If your opener has found no vowel in slot two, that is genuine information; most days put one there.

Eleven answers ended in Y

Y appeared in 11 answers, and every one of them had it as the final letter. That made Y the most common ending in the window, ahead of E on seven and R on six. Nine of the eleven were built on a suffix, which is worth knowing when you have four letters pinned and an open last tile. Grouped by type:

-ER was the other ending with a habit. RULER, WAGER, ASTER, PAGER and RIVER account for five of the six R endings in the window; MAJOR is the sixth. Two verbs ended in -EN (LIVEN, WAKEN). Endings, more than starts, are where this answer list shows its patterns, so a green or yellow in slots four and five is often worth more than the same colour up front.

There is a practical test here. If you have greens in slots one to four and the fifth tile is still open, run through the -Y and -ER candidates before anything else. In this window, those two endings alone covered 16 of the 41 answers.

• -Y adjectives (7): SOUPY, NIFTY, WISPY, SNOWY, MESSY, RITZY, BUMPY
• -LY adverbs (2): DRYLY, DIMLY
• Nouns (2): ELEGY, USURY

Double letters: ten of forty-one

Ten answers repeated a letter: RULER, BEIGE, DRYLY, THETA, MESSY, ELEGY, SLOOP, RIVER, USURY and PEEVE, which has three Es. That is almost one in four, a little above the hub's one-in-five figure for the full list. Each of them is a case where the grey tile on a second copy can mislead you, which is the trap the hub's repeated-letter section walks through.

Vowels told a story of restraint. Twenty-five answers had exactly two of A, E, I, O and U; thirteen had one; BEIGE and PEEVE had three; and DRYLY had none at all, leaning on Y alone. Once two vowels are confirmed, a third turned up only twice in this window, so your next guess is usually better spent on consonants.

Rare letters were genuinely rare. Q never appeared. X and Z showed up once each (REMIX, RITZY), J twice (JOIST, MAJOR), and F three times. Testing any of them before guess four is a gamble the archive does not support.

Where the copies sat matters too. Only three of the ten doubles were side by side (MESSY, SLOOP and the EE in PEEVE); the other seven were split apart, as in RULER, RIVER, THETA and USURY, with the first copy in slot one and the second further along. A split double is the harder one to see, because no single guess naturally places the same letter in both spots. If an answer starts with a letter you have confirmed and the remaining candidates are thin, try that letter again in slot four or five.

3 ways to practise with past answers

A past answer is useless as a puzzle once you have seen it, so use the archive to practise decisions rather than to solve:

Run any of these for a week and the table at the top of this page stops being abstract. You start to feel that E and S are almost always there, that Y lives at the end, and that a vowel in slot two is the default rather than the exception.

• Letter audit. Count how many of your opener's letters actually landed in this window. SLATE covers S, L, A, T and E, which appeared in 17, 8, 11, 11 and 20 answers respectively. Try the same count for your own opener using the table above and see which letter is pulling the least weight.
• Second-guess drill. Pick a date at random and, before opening it, read only its summary row, which gives the first letter. Decide what you would play after your usual opener knowing just that letter. Then open the day, enter the opener and your second guess into the solver with the right colours, and see how many candidates remain.
• Double-letter drill. Take the ten repeated-letter days listed above, play each one in the solver from your real opener, and note the guess at which the double became visible. If it is usually guess four or later, start testing doubles sooner.

Dates, numbers and time zones

Find a day by its number or its date. The # column is the Wordle number the game shows on your share grid, the days since 19 June 2021, so it climbs by exactly one a day (1 September 2026 was Wordle 1900, 2 September 1901). Every day page states the date in full as well.

If you play west of New York, your local Wordle may still be the previous day's when a new row appears here, because the list follows the Eastern date. Every answer in this window credits Tracy Bennett, the editor named on the hub as the person who chooses Wordle answers. That is why no list can predict the next word, and why this archive only ever grows one real day at a time.

The archive is also a quick way to check your own record. If your streak broke on a particular day, find that date here and look at the word: in this window the days most likely to cost a guess were the doubles, the -Y endings with an unusual stem (RITZY, USURY) and the rare-letter words (JOIST, REMIX). Knowing which kind beat you tells you which drill above to run.

Frequently asked questions