Today’s Wordle answer looks to be a slightly harder one than the previous couple of days. The NYT’s WordleBot tool says people are solving it in an average of 4.2 guesses, which isn’t too bad, but I’m seeing quite a few lost streaks on Twitter 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, #354, in case you’re reading this in a different time zone.
So be warned: spoilers lie ahead for game #355. 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 #355 — 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 only has one vowel*
- It has no repeated letters
- It ends with a fairly common ending 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 a measure around something.
OK, it’s time to scroll down for the answer…
Today’s Wordle answer #355, Thursday, June 9
So, what is today’s Wordle answer for game #355?
Drumroll please — it’s GIRTH.
I’m interested to see what people think of this one. The NYT’s WordleBot Tool is reporting an average score of 4.2 so far, which is higher than the previous couple of games, but still in the average range. So far, so good. But I’m seeing quite a few failures on Twitter and I ended up scoring a 5/6 — which is my lowest score for more than a week.
I suspect it’s one where your score will to an extent depend on how daring you’re feeling, because there are several possibilities that share most of the same letters. I chose not to narrow them down today and paid the price.
GIRTH — which is a measurement, or circumference around a body — is a little more obscure than most recent answers, but probably still a word that most people know. The fact that it only ranks 18,975th in Word and Phrase Info’s (opens in new tab) list of the most frequently used words in the English language indicates that it’s not used as often as the likes of FLOOD and GLOOM, though.
On the other hand, most of the letters are pretty common. As I show in my analysis of every Wordle answer, H and G are the only ones not in the top 10 (at 14th and 17th respectively), but they’re both more common where they are used here. In fact, H is the sixth most likely letter to end a Wordle, and is particularly common when paired with a T just before it. G, meanwhile, ranks eighth among starting letters, which is somewhat surprising and often catches me out.
As always, I started with STARE, my choice of the best Wordle start words, and received a yellow T and R.
WordleBot reports that I had 42 options remaining, and though I didn’t have a comprehensive list of what they all were, I did have my notes from game #350 (FROTH), which had exactly the same opening. From that list of 20 or so options, I decided to go with TORCH.
This was a good choice, narrowing it down to just three possible solutions — although WordleBot pointed out that THROB would have left me with just two. Three at that stage is not bad, though, and I know for a fact that I could have solved it in 4/6 if I’d decided to play a throwaway word and narrow it down next.
How? Well, I could see that the answer had to be one of BIRTH, MIRTH or GIRTH; there simply weren’t any other words that fitted. If I’d played BEING, for instance, I’d have known that it was BIRTH if just the B turned G, or GIRTH if the G turned yellow. And if neither did, it would have been MIRTH.
That’s my usual approach, but I felt like taking a gamble today — so instead, I guessed BIRTH. This was statistically the most likely of the three (B is very common at the start of a Wordle answer) but it was wrong.
Next I made what was probably a mistake, and played MIRTH. M is a slightly more common letter than G overall, but it’s less common at the start of a word, so maybe GIRTH would have made sense. Either way, the luck wasn’t with me today and it took me until the fifth guess to get it right.
Still, the official streak is still going strong at 157, so I’m not complaining too much.
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 #354, Wednesday, June 8
Reading this in a time zone where it’s still Wednesday? The Wordle answer for game #354 was TRAIT.
The good news here is that this one shakes things up a little after two very similar games (GLOOM and FLOOD) on Monday and Tuesday.
But for all that the letters are (very) different from those two games, it remains around the standard difficulty level, with the NYT’s WordleBot Tool reporting that people are completing it in an average score of 3.9.
There are no real problems with the word, which ranks 3,765th in Word and Phrase Info’s (opens in new tab) list of the most frequently used words in the English language, and each of these five letters is also very common.
Or rather, each of these four letters, as there’s a repeated T here. That’s probably the biggest potential pitfall here, together with the fact that there are quite a few solutions that have a similar format.
Let’s start with that repeated T. As I show in my analysis of every Wordle answer, T is the fifth most likely letter to be repeated in the game, with 61 solutions containing two of them. That’s around 2.5% of games, or a 1/40 chance of it happening. Not super-likely, then, but it’s worth bearing in mind that it’s a more common occurrence than getting a single Z, X, Q or J.
Helpfully, the two Ts here are at least in very common positions: T is the fourth most likely letter to start a Wordle, and the third most likely to end one.
The other three letters are also very common. A is second overall and most likely to be found in position #3 as it is here, R is third overall and third most likely to be in its position #2, and I ranks seventh in total and sixth in position #4. If you played the percentages here, you’ll probably have done OK.
My game certainly went more smoothly than the previous couple. As always, I started with STARE, my favorite out of the best Wordle start words. That gave me a green A and yellow R and T — a very nice opening after two days in which I had completely blank first guesses.
WordleBot says I had only 12 options available to me for my second guess, which is really low. Anyone playing its choice of CRANE had 22, so I definitely fared better today.
It was actually pretty easy to find those 12 words, too. I didn’t know there were 12 of course — WordleBot doesn’t give you that information until after the game — but I could see there weren’t many possible patterns that would work here, and came up with all 12 options before I played my second guess.
Essentially, I had three possible paths:
There were another three routes that were technically possible (R-AT-, R-A-T and T-A-R) but I ruled those out as dead ends fairly quickly.
TRA– was the most likely pattern, with seven possible solutions: TRAIN, TRAIL, TRAWL, TRACT, TRACK, TRAMP and TRAIT.
Meanwhile, only one word — WRATH — had the pattern -RAT-, but -RA-T had four potential answers: DRAFT, CRAFT, GRAFT and GRANT.
To further help me out, I knew that TRAIN had been an answer reasonably recently (game #319), and that TRAWL had featured early on; that was one I’d played back when the Wordle Archive was still around.
So I had 10 to choose from. TRA– was the more likely pattern, but playing GRAFT allowed me to rule out more options; if the F wasn’t included it would get rid of DRAFT and CRAFT as well, and if the G wasn’t present it would also rule out GRANT. Plus, if the T was included at both the start and end, it would leave me a choice of TRACT or TRAIT.
So I went with GRAFT and crossed my fingers.
Bingo! I didn’t solve it in 2/6, but it did exactly what I hoped it might do and ruled out all but two answers.
Interestingly, WordleBot says it would have played CLING as the second guess, as that would leave only one possible answer, but then again CLING couldn’t possibly have been correct, whereas GRAFT at least gave me a 1/10 chance of solving it in 2.
Anyway, that left me with a 50/50 and for once I guessed correctly here; I played TRAIT and found this Wordle answer in 3/6.
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 #354: TRAIT
- Wordle #353: FLOOD
- 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 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!