Today’s Wordle answer and hints — solution #279, Friday, March 25

Today’s Wordle answer appears to be a lot harder than yesterday’s. Not what-does-this-even-mean hard like CAULK. And not there-are-so-many-possible-answers-it’s-impossible hard like WATCH. But certainly a lot more tricky than yesterday’s rather easy Wordle.

With that in mind, you can probably use a few hints to help safeguard your streak. After all, a Wordle failure is only ever six guesses away. I’ve played every Wordle so far and lost only once — so I’ve got plenty of tips and tricks to share.

Each day, I’ll be updating this article with tips to help you find today’s Wordle answer. And if the hints aren’t enough, I’ll even give you the solution, in case you’re really stuck or just haven’t had time to complete today’s puzzle. But no cheating though, because that’s bad.

So be warned: spoilers lie ahead for game #279. Only read on if you want to know today’s Wordle answer!

Today’s Wordle answer #279 — hints to help you solve it

My first tip is that you should use one of the best Wordle start words for every game you play. But if you want some more specific clues to today’s Wordle answer then here you go:

It has two vowels in it
It ends with a very common letter
There are no repeated letters

Those hints should get you at least some of the way towards finding today’s Wordle answer, but if not then you can read on for a bigger clue; or, if you just want to know the answer, then skip down further for that.

Alright then, here’s my final hint for today’s Wordle answer: get off the bus.

Hopefully that will help you without giving it away entirely. Anyway, the answer’s coming up next…

Today’s Wordle answer #279, Friday, March 25

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

So, what is today’s Wordle answer for game #279?

I won’t keep you waiting any longer — it’s DEPOT.

So, what do you make of that then? I was very fortunate with the way my game went, and it feels like the kind of day when luck could play a bigger part than usual.

That’s not because it’s a really obscure word, but simply because there are a lot of options that contain three or four of those letters in various combinations. If you had D, E and T early on, for instance — which is fairly likely — there are more than 100 possible words, and I bet at least 50 of them are Wordle answers.

As far as the word itself goes, DEPOT is reasonably common, ranking at 11,949th in Word and Phrase Info‘s list of the most frequently used words in English.

It has a couple of different meanings, which you’re probably well aware of. Here’s how Merriam-Webster defines it:

a place for storing goods or motor vehicles
a place for the storage of military supplies
a place for the reception and forwarding of military replacements
a building for railroad or bus passengers or freight

As always, I played my favorite Wordle start word, STARE, which gave me the E and the T, although neither in the right place.

Unfortunately the list of five-letter words that contain an E and a T is vast; I looked at the Wordle Solver site after I’d completed the game, and it said there were 678 possible answers at that stage, although not all will have been actual Wordle solutions.

At this stage I was a bit lost, so I played common letters to narrow it down: I, N and L for INLET. Here I was rewarded with the T in the right place, but no extra yellows still.

(Image credit: Wordle/NYT)

That helped quite a lot, though. I knew the E couldn’t go directly before the T, and there aren’t many consonants that fit there either. Plus, the obvious ones — N, L, R and S — had all been ruled out in my first two guesses.

That left P, C and F as possibles for the fourth position, or another vowel. I worked through the options for the consonants and didn’t come up with any — though Wordle Solver now tells me I could have played EJECT, TEMPT or THEFT. However, I didn’t consider those, probably because they all involve a double letter.

Instead, I concentrated on the vowels, and identified two options — DEBUT and DEPOT. Reasoning that O and P are more common than U and B, I played DEPOT and found today’s Wordle answer in 3/6.

As I said, I was definitely a bit lucky today and could easily have ended up with a 5/6 or worse. ‘Wordle 279 X’ is not trending on Twitter yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was later.

I’ve got my fingers crossed that not too many of you lost your streak today — let me know how you did in the comments or via email.

Previous Wordle answers

If you’re looking for a list of older Wordle answers, we can also help. Here’s a list going back 20 games.

Wordle #278: CHEST
Wordle #277: PURGE
Wordle #276: SLOSH
Wordle #275: THEIR
Wordle #274: RENEW
Wordle #273: ALLOW
Wordle #272: SAUTE
Wordle #271: MOVIE
Wordle #270: CATER
Wordle #269: TEASE
Wordle #268: SMELT
Wordle #267: FOCUS
Wordle #266: TODAY
Wordle #265: WATCH
Wordle #264: LAPSE
Wordle #263: MONTH
Wordle #262: SWEET
Wordle #261: HOARD
Wordle #260: CLOTH
Wordle #259: BRINE

Wordle tips — how to win at Wordle

he best tip I can give is to use one of the best Wordle start words. I can’t stress this enough — it makes a massive difference.

Without one, you’ll be scrabbling around in the dark trying (and possibly failing) to find the right five letters (or possibly fewer) out of the 26 possibles. But clever people (not me) have done the math and identified the best start words based on both frequency in English and frequency among Wordle answers. So use them!

Secondly, think about combinations, especially at the start and end. Some options are far more common than others — for instance, SH, ST, CR and CH all feature frequently.

Vowels obviously need consideration too: not all Wordle answers will contain more than one, but plenty do, and some even have three. A good Wordle start word should have used a couple, but if they don’t feature you might well want to try another one or two on your next go.

Plus, remember the Y — this sometimes acts as a surrogate vowel, and is easy to forget. It also appears at the end of plenty of words.

Finally, try out possibilities. So long as you don’t press ‘Enter’ you can try possible answers to see how they look on screen. Put in likely letters plus any you know are definitely in the word, then mentally change one to the other available options. This technique has worked for me multiple times, and it’s particularly helpful when the word in question is not an obvious one (like FJORD or ISLET).

What else should I know about Wordle?

Wordle launched in October 2021, but only grew in popularity towards the end of the year, then went viral in January as the world woke up to its charms. In fact, it proved so successful that The New York Times bought Wordle for a seven-figure sum in early February and the game is now part of NYT Games.

It’s played via the NYT Games website here, and is entirely free. Both the NYT and the game’s creator, Josh Wardle, have stated that it will remain free. Some people think that Wordle has got harder since the NYT takeover, but it really hasn’t.

Wordle is a simple game in which your challenge is to guess a five-letter word in six attempts. Each time you guess, you’re told which of your chosen letters are in the target word, and whether they are in the right place.

If a letter is in the correct place, it turns green. If it’s in the word but in the wrong place, it turns yellow. And if it’s not in the word at all, it turns gray.

There’s just one puzzle a day, and everyone completes the same one. It resets at 7 p.m. ET each day, but if you’re eager for another game to pass the time while you wait, we’ve put together a list of the best Wordle alternatives such as the ultra-stressful (but very good) Squabble, the four-Wordles-at-once Quordle, the eight-Wordles-at-once Octordle and the new, soccer-themed, Who Are Ya?.

We also like the geography-based Wordle clone Worldle, the Star Wars-themed SWordle and the math-based Mathler. And, there’s the unofficial Wordle Unlimited, which lets you play as many games per day as you like, and adjust the number of letters in the word, from four to a crazy 11.

We also have pages on today’s Quordle answers and today’s Octordle answers if you want a triple hit of puzzle solutions. And we’d also recommend checking out the excellent new Heardle, which is like Wordle for pop music.