Today’s Wordle answer should prove a little easier than yesterday’s, but don’t expect it to be a walk in the park. The NYT’s WordleBot tool says people are solving it in an average of 4 guesses, which is about standard for the game, but I am seeing plenty of people lose their streaks already.
With that in mind, you might find some hints to be helpful. After all, Wordle is a deceptively simple game and failure is only ever six guesses away.
I’ve played every Wordle so far and lost only once, so I’ve got plenty of Wordle tips and tricks to share. I’ve also analyzed every Wordle answer to look for patterns and got some further advice for you there. And if you’re new to the game you should also take a look at my What is Wordle? guide.
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. I’ve also included my analysis of yesterday’s puzzle, #352, in case you’re reading this in a different time zone.
So be warned: spoilers lie ahead for game #353. Only read on if you want to know today’s Wordle answer!
PS: If you’re a music fan then also check out our guide to today’s Heardle answer.
Today’s Wordle answer #353 — 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 uses vowels in two positions*
- It has one repeated letter
- It starts with a common starting combination
* By vowel I’m meaning A, E, I, O, U. There are other letters that are sometimes considered to be vowels, depending on how they are used.
Those hints should get you at least some of the way towards finding today’s Wordle answer. 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: Today’s Wordle answer is an overwhelming quantity.
OK, it’s time to scroll down for the answer…
Today’s Wordle answer #353, Tuesday, June 7
So, what is today’s Wordle answer for game #353?
Drumroll please — it’s FLOOD.
This one is so similar to yesterday’s game (see below) that I could probably just reuse my notes and change a few words and letters. Or rather, I could do if I hadn’t played it in a different way that rather hampered my own efforts.
Like yesterday’s game, it has a double-O in the middle, and like yesterday’s game it has an L directly before that. Plus, as a word, it’s another fairly common one — it ranks 3,608th in Word and Phrase Info’s (opens in new tab) list of the most frequently used words in the English language.
Difficulty-wise, it’s also in the same ballpark, with the NYT’s WordleBot Tool reporting that people are completing it in an average score of 4.
That said, 4 is a little down on yesterday’s 4.3, and there are some key differences with FLOOD that make it potentially easier than GLOOM.
Chief among them is that the F and D at the start and end of the word are far more common than the G and M in GLOOM.
As I show in my analysis of every Wordle answer, F is the 19th most common letter in Wordle overall, but it jumps up to eighth when used at the start of a word — so just ahead of G in ninth. Plus, FL is a lot more common than GL; it’s found in 36 answers, whereas GL is in a mere 16.
The situation with the D at the end is even more stark. The M at the end yesterday was not particularly common — just 13th in that position, with 42 answers finishing in that way; that’s only 1.8% of the total. But a D at the end occurs in 118 games, or 5.1% of games, making it a much more likely occurrence.
As with yesterday, the two Os in the middle are reasonably uncommon overall — they occur in 2.8% of all games — but a lot more likely than most other double letters.
The biggest challenge I faced today, however, is that I (wrongly) assumed the pattern of today’s game would be different. If I’d played exactly the same first two words, I might have got a 3/6, but instead I had to settle for another 4.
As always, I started with STARE. But whichever of the best Wordle start words you use, you may have faced a blank first guess for the second day in a row. Indeed, anyone playing WordleBot’s favored CRANE will also have had this happen. Given that I’d previously only had two of these in 53 games, to get two in two days seems unfortunate.
But things were about to get worse. My stupid brain decided that as yesterday’s answer was GLOOM, I should avoid O and L in my second word today — because obviously Wordle wouldn’t do the -LOO- thing two games in a row.
So I played BUNCH, a nice word that includes the very common N, C and H, and starts with a common-for-the-opening-letter B.
And that was entirely blank too. Yes, two blank goes for my first two guesses. I’m not sure that’s ever happened to me before. It certainly hasn’t happened to me since I started this column.
I was a little panicked by this stage, but fortunately things got better from that stage. WordleBot tells me I had actually narrowed down the options from 226 to 46, despite not having uncovered any letters yet, and on the plus side there weren’t many common letters left to play.
I knew I should include O and I, as one of those was almost certain to be in the game, and it also seemed sensible to play a Y at the end as that is a very common ending letter. Adding D and L gave me DOILY, which isn’t a Wordle solution but which is a valid guess, and which I also use for my daily Quordle game.
Finally, that turned up some yellow letters — the D, L and O. According to WordleBot, it also narrowed down the options to just one possible answer. It didn’t take me long to find it, either: clearly this was going to be another -LOO- word, and if that were the case then the D would have to go at the end. With B already ruled out I couldn’t play BLOOD, so FLOOD it was.
So, after all that fun I scored a 4/6 — and learned that Wordle really doesn’t care what the previous day’s answer was, a fact I’ll bear in mind next time.
Let me know how you did in the comments or via email (opens in new tab) — and if you have already got in touch then apologies for the delay in replying, you will get a response soon (honest)!
Yesterday’s Wordle answer #352, Monday, June 6
Reading this in another time zone where it’s still Monday? The Wordle answer for game #352 was GLOOM.
This one definitely has the potential to cause some problems. Recent games have mainly involved words with very common letters and the difficulty has been linked to just how many options there are. But here, it’s more about the letters themselves.
Either way, the NYT’s WordleBot Tool (now sadly behind a paywall), says people are completing it in an average score of 4.3, which is pretty high as these things go.
As a word, there are unlikely to be too many issues; Word and Phrase Info (opens in new tab)ranks it at 9,639th in the English language, whereas Saturday’s FROTH was down in 20,600th overall.
So, what’s the issue with those five letters? Well, there’s a double-O for starters. Any repeated letter tends to make a puzzle more difficult, and a double letter, with the two together, is even less likely.
On the plus side, O is a fairly common letter for this to happen with. In fact, as I show in my analysis of every Wordle answer, two Os are found together in 58 Wordle answers — which is 2.8% of all games. To put that in context, you’re more likely to get a double-O than you are to get a single Z, X, Q or J. On the other hand, it’s still relatively uncommon compared to getting a single O, which happens in a whopping 32% of Wordles.
The unfortunate complicating factor here is that it’s paired with two fairly uncommon letters, in M and G. They rank at 16th and 17th respectively overall, and M isn’t much more common at the end of a word than it is elsewhere — just 13th. To make things slightly easier, G is eighth among starting letters, and L is a very common letter overall, appearing in 31% of Wordle answers, so it’s not all bad.
One thing that will undoubtedly have driven the average score up here is that even with one of the best Wordle start words many people will have turned up no letters at all on the first guess, which is a fairly uncommon experience for most of us.
For instance, if you start with STARE, as I do, or with WordleBot’s favored CRANE, you’ll have got a blank first go. The last time this happened to me was with game #340 (VOUCH) and before that it was way back in #298 (CHUNK).
I have a bunch of words I consider in this situation: COULD, POUCH, DOILY, BUNCH, DOING, CHILD and a couple of others. They all have their pros and cons, but which one I play is mostly down to luck. Most contain two of the three remaining vowels, plus some out of the remaining most common letters: C, D, H, L, N etc.
Today I happened to go with CLOUD, which was very fortunate as it gave me a green -LO–, and narrowed down my options from 226 to just four!
It didn’t take me long to work out what those four were, either, because there aren’t many letters that can go before an L at the start of a word. The most likely, S and C, had both been ruled out by now, which left me with just FL, BL, GL and PL to work through.
Technically, the word could have started with a vowel before the L, but if that were to be the case it would almost certainly have been followed by another L — as in ALLOW, for instance — rather than by an O. So I dismissed this and set to work finding possible answers.
I came up with six in total: BLOOM, BLOWN, BLOOP, FLOWN, GLOOM and GLOOP. WordleBot told me afterwards that BLOOP and GLOOP weren’t valid solutions, but as it happens that didn’t matter because by playing BLOOM I was able to guarantee myself a 4/6 anyway.
This is a method I’ve learned from WordleBot: whenever I have a limited number of possible answers, I check each one to see if a failure would rule out all the other options other than the correct one or not.
With BLOOM, that was the case — if only the B had turned green, the answer would have been BLOWN. If the B and the second O had been green, it would have been BLOOP. If the O and M, GLOOM. If the second O on its own, GLOOP. And if none of them, FLOWN.
So, assuming I hadn’t missed any possible answers, I was going to escape with a 4/6 here. I duly played BLOOM, the OM at the end turned green, and I knew it had to be GLOOM.
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 #352: GLOOM
- Wordle #351: DEPTH
- Wordle #350: FROTH
- Wordle #349: PHASE
- Wordle #348: SHOWY
- Wordle #347: CREAK
- Wordle #346: MANOR
- Wordle #345: ATOLL
- Wordle #344: BAYOU
- Wordle #343: CREPT
- Wordle #342: TIARA
- Wordle #341: ASSET
- Wordle #340: VOUCH
- Wordle #339: ALBUM
- Wordle #338: HINGE
- Wordle #337: MONEY
- Wordle #336: SCRAP
- Wordle #335: GAMER
- Wordle #334: GLASS
- Wordle #333: SCOUR
Wordle tips — how to win at Wordle
The 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 (opens in new tab), 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 midnight each day. You’ll find more information about the game in our What is Wordle? article.
Wordle Alternatives
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. We also have a page on today’s Quordle answers, because it’s our favorite, and also today’s Heardle answer — because that’s great too.
Other Wordle alternatives to try are the ultra-stressful (but very good) Squabble and the soccer-themed, Who Are Ya?. We also like the geography-based Wordle clone Worldle, the Star Wars-themed SWordle and the math-based Mathler.
There are certainly plenty of options once you’ve finished Wordle for the day!