NYT Wordle today — answer and hints for game #1,033, Wednesday, April 17
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 new NYT Strands today page for my verdict on the New York Times’ latest brainteaser.
SPOILER WARNING: Today’s Wordle answer and hints are below, so don’t read on if you don’t want to see them.
Your Wordle expert
Your Wordle expert
Marc McLaren
Wordle hints (game #1,033) – 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 #1,033) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is T.
T is one of the most common starting letters in the game, beginning 149 of Wordle‘s 2,309 answers. That gives it a ranking of fourth in the alphabet, behind only S, C and B.
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.
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Wordle hints (game #1,033) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is 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.
Wordle hints (game #1,033) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1,033.
Today’s Wordle answer is a part of something paid.
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 #1,033)
(Image credit: New York Times)
NYT average score: 4.0
My score: 4
WordleBot’s score: 3
Best start word performance*: TRICE (4 remaining answers)
My start word performance: WATER (17)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1,033) is… TITHE.
I play each Wordle puzzle very early on in the day, and that has a single drawback: the WordleBot average that I see may well have changed by the time you play. That was the case with yesterday’s SHANK, which had an average of 3.8 when I played, but 4.0 by the end of the day. Similarly, EQUIP jumped from 3.9 to 4.0.
I report this admittedly minor fact for one reason: today’s answer, TITHE, has an average score of 4.0 already. So, based on the previous couple of days, you might expect it to go up from here – which would make it harder than either EQUIP or SHANK.
Taken in its own right, I’d place it as harder than SHANK but easier than EQUIP. It has something neither of those two games do, in the form of a repeated letter. But unlike EQUIP it doesn’t have any uncommon letters. It’s arguably a less common word than either of the other two, though. I checked out what WordAndPhraseInfo had to say on the subject, and found that EQUIP ranked 4,178th, SHANK is at 12,966th and TITHE way down at 31,562nd. So yes, it is less common than the others.
I rather messed up my game, getting a fantastic start via my random opener, WATER. That left only 17 possible solutions, which was one of the best results today; TRICE left only four, and TRADE and TRACE were at 13, but otherwise the top 20 were all higher than that. In some cases much higher – CRANE left 128, for instance.
For my second guess I went with PESTO. I wanted to include the T in the fourth spot, even though it had already been confirmed in third position, in order to guard against a double-T, as in PETTY and JETTY. But it would have been more sensible, in hindsight, to include T twice – because lots of the options at this stage had that repeated letter. As well as PETTY, JETTY and TITHE, there was also TITLE, PETIT and BUTTE, all of which I found.
Others on my list included FETID, FETUS, CUTIE and SETUP, so PESTO seemed like a decent choice. WordleBot agreed, saying it was “wonderful” but also unlucky, and it only cut the options to five.
Those five were UNTIE, CUTIE, TITLE, LITHE and TITHE. TITLE was a decent option to narrow them down; it could have left a 50/50 between CUTIE and UNTIE, but that was a reasonable risk to take. That didn’t happen though; four of the five letters in TITLE turned green, meaning that the answer now had to be TITHE.
In a different time zone where it’s still Tuesday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1,032, too.
Wordle yesterday had a vowel in one place.
* 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 K.
K is much more common at the end of a Wordle answer than at the start, and in fact ranks ninth overall in this regard.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here’s an extra one for game #1,032.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer is a cut of meat or a wayward shot.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1,032)
(Image credit: New York Times)
NYT average score: 3.8
My score: 4
WordleBot’s score: 3
Best start word performance*: SAINT (5 remaining answers)
Monday’s Wordle caused no end of problems, judging by the amount of people who visited this page for hints and/or the answer. That’s despite the fact that its average score was only 3.9 when I wrote my column, upgraded to 4.0 by the time everyone had finished playing. Not easy, but not ridiculously high either.
The reason for that dichotomy, as I discussed in my commentary (see below), was the performance of ADIEU and AUDIO. These are the two most popular start words, and both cut down the options considerably. So although the average was not so high, people who didn’t play either of those words will have found it much, much harder. It was probably a 3.4 game for ADIEU/AUDIO players and a 4.4 game for everyone else.
I doubt today’s Wordle will have the same split. Yes, a few of the best Wordle start words helped more than others when it came to SHANK, but the difference is unlikely to be anywhere near as pronounced as it was for EQUIP.
WordleBot says the average score here is 3.8, so only a little below what it was for EQUIP – but I’d be amazed if it causes the same level of pain. That said, it’s not down at 3.4 like STEEL, say, so it’s not entirely without complications either.
For starters, K is not the most common letter in the Wordle alphabet; in fact, it ranks only 20th. H, meanwhile, is only a middling letter too, ranking 14th. But in both those cases, there are mitigating factors that reduce the impact. For instance, while K is not the most common letter in the Wordle alphabet, it’s way more likely to appear at the end of a solution than it is elsewhere. What about the H? Well, as I show in my analysis of every Wordle answer, that SH starting combo is the second most common overall (behind ST, in case you’re interested).
All of which adds up to… a middling game. In terms of the best start words, only one of the top 20 cut down the options to single figures, and that was SAINT (5), which is not a common choice. CRANE left 20, SLATE and STARE left 31. Yes, it was one of those middling days.
My random word today was CABAL, which was not very helpful and which left 258 options. From there I played STARE, partly for old times’ sake (it used to be my start word) and partly because it moved the A to the middle, where it appears most often, then added some very common letters to it.
STARE cut my word list to 16, and because both the S and A turned green, it was very easy for me to identify them. There are, after all, only so many letters that can sit between S and A. I came up with most of them: SWAMP, SPAWN, SOAPY, SHADY, SHAKY, SMASH, SPANK, SWASH and SHANK. Yes, I missed a few (SWAIN, SPASM, SWAMI) but I had enough info to know that WHISK was a good third guess.
WHISK gave me the green H and K that confirmed I now only had one possible solution. That was SHANK, and I played it next for a 4/6.
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 #1032, Tuesday 16 April: SHANK
Wordle #1031, Monday 15 April: EQUIP
Wordle #1030, Sunday 14 April: BLIMP
Wordle #1029, Saturday 13 April: STEEL
Wordle #1028, Friday 12 April: WHINY
Wordle #1027, Thursday 11 April: LOUSE
Wordle #1026, Wednesday 10 April: BROTH
Wordle #1025, Tuesday 9 April: MERGE
Wordle #1024, Monday 8 April: BREED
Wordle #1023, Sunday 7 April: VOILA
Wordle #1022, Saturday 6 April: FINCH
Wordle #1021, Friday 5 April: WRIST
Wordle #1020, Thursday 4 April: CLIMB
Wordle #1019, Wednesday 3 April: PLAIT
Wordle #1018, Tuesday 2 April: SERUM
Wordle #1017, Monday 1 April: FROND
Wordle #1016, Sunday 31 March: TABOO
Wordle #1015, Saturday 30 March: FORCE
Wordle #1014, Friday 29 March: REALM
Wordle #1013, Thursday 28 March: SPEAK
Wordle #1012, Wednesday 27 March: STUNG
Wordle #1011, Tuesday 26 March: MAYOR
Wordle #1010, Monday 25 March: SALLY
Wordle #1009, Sunday 24 March: TOWEL
Wordle #1008, Saturday 23 March: RISEN
Wordle #1007, Friday 22 March: DECAY
Wordle #1006, Thursday 21 March: SHADE
Wordle #1005, Wednesday 20 March: LINGO
Wordle #1004, Tuesday 19 March: ABIDE
Wordle #1003, Monday 18 March: SPELT
Wordle #1002, Sunday 17 March: SNORT
Wordle #1001, Saturday 16 March: TOXIN
Wordle #1000, Friday 15 March: ERUPT
Wordle #999, Thursday 14 March: SINCE
Wordle #998, Wednesday 13 March: LOCAL
Wordle #997, Tuesday 12 March: HEAVE
Wordle #996, Monday 11 March: PESKY
Wordle #995, Sunday 10 March: GRASP
Wordle #994, Saturday 9 March: CHEER
Wordle #993, Friday 8 March: EARLY
Wordle #992, Thursday 7 March: CLONE
Wordle #991, Wednesday 6 March: TEARY
Wordle #990, Tuesday 5 March: HUNCH
Wordle #989, Monday 4 March: FLAME
Wordle #988, Sunday 3 March: STATE
Wordle #987, Saturday 2 March: URBAN
Wordle #986, Friday 1 March: FORTY
Wordle #985, Thursday 29 February: IMAGE
Wordle #984, Wednesday 28 February: DEVIL
Wordle #983, Tuesday 27 February: SENSE
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.
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…
