Today’s Wordle hints – answer, clues and tips for game #684, Thursday, May 4
It’s time for your Wednesday Wordle, which is identical to every other day’s Wordles in that it serves up a hidden word to uncover in six guesses or fewer. So I don’t know why I mentioned the day, really. Anyway, the key thing to note here is that today’s puzzle is not too bad at all. No need to stress unduly, honest.
Fancy some Wordle hints before you begin? Then read on for a selection of clues to guide you in the right direction. And if you don’t have time to play at all, you can see the answer, too. Want more word-based fun? My Quordle today page contains hints and answers for that game.
SPOILER WARNING: Information about today’s Wordle answers are below, so don’t read on if you don’t want to see them.
Your Wordle expert
Your Wordle expert
Marc McLaren
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 #683) – 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 #683) – 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.
• 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 #683) – 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 #683) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for Wordle hints today? Don’t worry, I’ll give you one more for game #683.
Today’s Wordle answer is a massed crowd.
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 #683)
(Image credit: New York Times)
Today’s Wordle answer (game #683) is… HORDE.
HORDE is a nice example of a homophone, in that it sounds the same as HOARD, but is spelled differently and has a different meaning (and don’t get me started on the difference between homophones, homographs and homonyms (opens in new tab)). Anyway, as a lover of language I like a homophone, and I don’t think we’ve had one since BREAD (a homophone of BRED) a few weeks ago. But more interesting is considering when we last had a homophone that could also be a Wordle answer? I reckon it’s BIRTH (game #631), which is a homophone of BERTH. But please correct me if I’m wrong.
Anyway, none of this has anything to do with the difficulty or otherwise of HORDE as a Wordle word. But that’s fair enough (I hope), because there isn’t an awful lot to say about it on that front. WordleBot says people are solving it in an average of 3.8 guesses – so just below the standard – and there are no particular complications to it.
Three of the letters are very common indeed, with E being the most common of all, and the most common ending letter. D and H are a bit less common but both are still in the top 15. Nothing to see here, move along.
One thing that may have made it harder is that some of the best Wordle starting words were not very helpful today. SLATE, WordleBot’s favorite, left 123 possible answers; SLANT was at 530. Some were a bit better, for instance CRANE (47), TRACE (43) and ADIEU (40), while my pick, STARE, was at 52. But only CARTE (22) really narrowed things down.
With a green E and a yellow R, I knew I had lots of options open to me – and most of them had the format -R–E. That pattern encompasses a huge number of words such as DRONE, DROVE, GROVE, CRONE, CRIME, BRIBE, DRIVE, FROZE, PRIZE and so on. The sensible option was therefore to narrow down those consonants and work out which the other vowel was.
POUND was my choice to do this and it worked beautifully: the O turned green, the D turned yellow and I now had just one answer left. It didn’t take me long to find HORDE and I duly scored a nice 3/6.
In a different time zone where it’s still Tuesday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #682, too.
Wordle yesterday had one vowel.
The first letter in yesterday’s Wordle answer was S.
There were no repeated letters in yesterday’s Wordle.
The last letter in yesterday’s Wordle was Y.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer is in a bad mood.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #682)
(Image credit: New York Times)
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #682) was… SULKY.
Sometimes in Wordle you just have to accept that the luck isn’t with you. There’s nothing wrong with that; after all, luck is a massive part of the game. Sure, you can reduce the effect that it has by using one of the best Wordle starting words and thinking strategically in the way that the NYT’s AI tool WordleBot does, but there’s only so much you can do to guard against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Today was one of those days for me. WordleBot awarded me 96/99 for skill – against a global average of 84 – but only 41/99 for luck. That’s, well, unlucky.
Things started off pretty poorly, with just a single green S to carry into the second round. That left me with a massive 81 possible solutions, WordleBot told me, compared to 20 for those of you who started with SLATE, 31 for SLANT. Still, it was a lot better than the result for the most popular start word, ADIEU (246), and even further ahead of the likes of CRANE (357) and TRACE (344).
I didn’t find all 81 possible answers open to me, of course; I’m not that much of a geek. But I came up with a couple of dozen split into groups covering all the second letters that follow an S: C, H, M, L, M, N, P, O, I, U, W. For instance, I had SCOWL, SCOOP, SCOFF, SHUSH, SLIMY, SMOCK, SNOOP, SPOIL, SOUND, SILKY, SULLY, SWOOP and lots more in that vein.
Narrowing it down further made sense, so I played PYLON; this would rule in or out three of those possible second letters, plus one vowel and the Y.
WordleBot said it would have played PLINK instead, but there wasn’t much in it; its guess would have left just two answers, while mine left four still in play. These were SILKY, SILLY, SULKY and SULLY and I already had all four jotted down from the previous go; I was fairly sure there were no others to consider.
So, which to play? Well, any of the four would have been an equally good choice, because they’d all have guaranteed a 4/6 based on whether the I/O and K/second L changed color. I went with SILKY for no particular reason and guessed wrong – but a 4/6 finish with SULKY was only a few seconds away.
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 #682, Tuesday 2 May: SULKY
Wordle #681, Monday 1 May: RANGE
Wordle #680, Sunday 30 April: PLAZA
Wordle #679, Saturday 29 April: CEDAR
Wordle #678, Friday 28 April: CIRCA
Wordle #677, Thursday 27 April: LOGIC
Wordle #676, Wednesday 26 April: METRO
Wordle #675, Tuesday 25 April: JOKER
Wordle #674, Monday 24 April: DITTO
Wordle #673, Sunday 23 April: UNZIP
Wordle #672, Saturday 22 April: BROKE
Wordle #671, Friday 21 April: KAYAK
Wordle #670, Thursday 20 April: PLATE
Wordle #669, Wednesday 19 April: THUMP
Wordle #668, Tuesday 18 April: HOUND
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
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.
It’s time for your Wednesday Wordle, which is identical to every other day’s Wordles in that it serves up a hidden word to uncover in six guesses or fewer. So I don’t know why I mentioned the day, really. Anyway, the key thing to note here is that today’s puzzle…
