Tag: wordle clue

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas around these parts.

Sunday evening it began snowing (again) here in the mountains of Arizona. It’s our second snowfall of November, and it’s quite lovely. But it feels less autumnal than ever. The seasons can’t make up their mind, which is why we need a fifth season between Fall and Winter, or maybe even more than five.

In fact, I could see a sixth season between Winter and Spring as well, before the warmth of Spring truly blooms, but after the true depths of Winter. The windy in-between.

In any case, let’s not dither. Let’s Wordle!

Today’s Wordle Solution (With Spoilers!)

The Hint: Canada. Pancakes.

The Clue: This word ends with a vowel.

The Answer:

What a lovely and pleasant Wordle!

Then again, I may just be in high spirits because I beat the pants off my enemy and rival, Wordle Bot, but a whopping two guesses today!

I opened with climb today, despite it having very few vowels. I suppose I was going for something different from yesterday’s (admittedly very effective) irate. Luckily enough, climb did the trick, winnowing the field to just 52 remaining possibilities.

With now vowels, however, I needed to come up with something different. I figured I’d try to reposition the two yellow boxes I had and guessed lamer. Unfortunately, both the ‘L’ and the ‘M’ remained in yellow, along with an additional yellow ‘E’ and a green ‘A.’ With four letters in my lap, and one in the right spot, and a much better idea of where those first yellow letters could now go, I quickly narrowed down my options to just one: maple.

And sure enough, maple was the winner! Sweet, syrupy huzzah!

And behold, it took Wordle Bot five guesses to get there today despite getting two yellows and a green with slate. From there he guessed bangs (despite knowing that the ‘S’ was no good!) then value, then ladle and finally—FINALLY—maple.

Ah well, even the Wordle Bot makes mistakes.

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On November 13th, 1789, Benjamin Franklin wrote “Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.”

The quotation comes from a letter Franklin penned to French scientist Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, who Franklin was worried about, having not heard from him since the start of the bloody French Revolution.

“My health continues much as it has been for some time,” Franklin concluded, “except that I grow thinner and weaker so that I cannot expect to hold out much longer.”

He died several months later, on April 17th, 1790 at the ripe old age of 84.

“Death and taxes” has gone on to become one of Franklin’s most famous and most often-cited quotations. And these days, with the United States in one dire strait after another, Franklin may well be right about the durability of the Constitution.

Then again, we’ve been through some pretty tough spots in our nation’s history. Not long after the Constitution was written, two of the Founding Fathers—John Adams and Thomas Jefferson—had a falling out that would last the rest of their lives. From the very start, or at least once George Washington had served his time as president, the country was at odds, eventually culminating in the Civil War, an event we still feel the repercussions of today. Slavery, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, Iraq, the Depression, the Housing Crisis. The pandemic.

Times, you might argue, are always and have always been hard and we seem to persevere. I’m not sure we’re any more divided than we always have been, either. It just seems that way thanks to 24 hour news and social media. Maybe I just want to be an optimist.

Anyways, I’ll stop rambling on now. Let’s do this Wordle!

Today’s Wordle Solution (Spoilers!)

The Hint: Absolutely hairbrained.

The Clue: There are three vowels in this word.

The Answer:

You will all be happy to know that I beat Wordle Bot today. The silly robot took four guesses to get to the final answer. Slate / prick / image/ inane was the path he took.

I got . . . very lucky, though I really wish I’d managed to pull this off in two again. I’ve had some crazy good luck with my opening guesses lately. Today, irate left me with just two options. I guessed image, unfortunately, but I don’t think it was too inane of me.

On Friday, my opening guess also left me with just two remaining possibilities and the day before that, my opening guess left me with just one! I feel like any day now I’ll get my first hole in one! It’s in the air!

If that happens I’m just going to write one word: Huzzah!

Have a nice and hopefully lazy Sunday, dearest Wordlers.

Thank all the trees in the forest, and all the beasts on the land, and all the fish sea and the birds in the sky and the rocks and the dirt and the fresh air . . . it’s finally Friday!

It’s kind of an important Friday, too. Today is Veteran’s Day, a day where we honor everyone who has served in the US Armed Forces over the years—and hopefully a day that makes us think about the cost of war on the men and women who serve, and what we can do to help those who fall through the cracks.

A somber day, but one of celebration nonetheless.

I actually didn’t pick a Veteran’s Day themed word for today’s Wordle (which I’m grateful for because my opening word was nearly perfect) but there are plenty to choose from: tanks, bombs, rifle, boots, medal, naval, serve, camos, plane.

In any case, have a great day off of work and out of school and have some fun with your friends and family. Maybe watch a good war movie like Saving Private Ryan, 1917 or Hacksaw Ridge.

And now, let’s solve this Wordle!

Today’s Wordle Solution Guide (Spoilers!)

The Hint: Actually, I already gave you a hint.

The Clue: There are no repeat letters in this word.

The Answer:

Okay, so this is the first time I’ve given away the answer in the first part of the post, but I hid it among many other possible answers so . . . I think that was clever and subtle enough. I was feeling generous given how quickly I solved this one.

I also kind of love that it’s a “themed” word for Veteran’s Day! It’s probably totally accidental (unless they’re curating the list more carefully than I realized).

In any case, I was thinking of my gamertag in Call Of Duty because I’ve been playing oodles of Modern Warfare II lately and my gamertag is very similar to the word diablo which would make a great opening guess except for that it’s six letters long (and Spanish). But translate that to English and you get devil. So I went with it, thinking it might be decent.

Turns out it was nearly perfect, leaving me with just two possible solutions. That’s crazy good, but my opening guess yesterday was even better. I figure this is the third best possible guess. Yesterday I had just one answer remaining after my opener and the only thing better than that is guessing the right word off the bat.

In any case, devil left me with two options: medal or pedal. I couldn’t think of anything else and, given it’s Veteran’s Day and all, I went with medal. Huzzah for me!

Huzzah for our veterans! And pray for peace.

Yesterday was rainy with a touch of sleet and the hint of snow—ironic weather given yesterday’s Wordle.

Today’s Wordle is ironic for other reasons and would have been even more at odds with yesterday’s big mid-term elections. That’s an extra hint for you, by the way. You’re welcome.

November is an odd month. It’s always felt very wintry to me, and not so much like autumn. Autumn often feels like the shortest season. If summer is a bonfire, then autumn is its dying embers, reduced quickly to the ash of winter. Autumn is a sun setting, brief and glorious with color.

It feels very much like fall fades pretty quickly after Halloween, and by the time Thanksgiving arrives we’re firmly rooted in winter, but in reality winter won’t begin until late December, just in time for Christmas.

Whatever the case, as Ned Stark never hesitates to remind us, winter is coming. So is the holiday season. And plenty more Wordles!

Let’s do this one, shall we?

Today’s Wordle Guide (Spoilers ahead!)

The Hint: Do this and we do the opposite of fall.

The Clue: This word begins with a vowel.

The Answer:

Holy moly, that was some lucky guessing. Sometimes I pick a ‘QU’ word for my opening guess because you can get a few vowels out of them usually. Quiet or quite are both triple-vowel openers.

I didn’t expect to get so close so quickly, however. This is, hands down, the luckiest possible opening guess that isn’t the actual answer itself. Since I’ve never gotten one of these in just one guess, this is officially my luckiest guess of all (which is a tad bit ironic given how close I was the other day).

Quite left me with just one possible guess, and I knew it had to be unite without a doubt. It’s ironic also because, well, we just had mid-term elections and the country feels anything but united, alas. Not that a little healthy division is a bad thing! We need to debate the issues, disagree on things, vote for different parties and politicians and all of that messy business. A country in total lockstep—total unity—would be unsettling and likely a farce.

Still, I wish we could be just a tad bit more united than we are. Or at least not demonize those with whom we disagree. Our political opponents are (usually) not monsters. Liberal, conservative, socialist, libertarian—we’re all human beings at the end of the day, trying to put food on the table and take care of our loved ones and find joy and meaning in the day-to-day grind. In this strange world we visit ever so briefly before shuffling off . . . to something new. Something different. Maybe to nothing at all. Who can say?

Oh, and back to the matter at hand: I defeated my nemesis, Wordle Bot, today! He took a whopping four tries. Bwahahahahaha!

Be excellent to each other, dearest Wordlers. And party on!

It’s November 9th, which means we’re nearly a third of the way through November already. What the heck. I feel like Halloween was just a day or three ago. Stop it, time. Just stop it.

I’m mostly over my ridiculous respiratory cold that took me out for the majority of October, thank the gods and angels. I’ve been back in the gym and it feels good to be back, though I’m too winded and out of shape for my liking.

Naturally, now that I’m back to making healthy choices and taking care of myself, my daughter is once again sick with another bad cold—sore throat, fever, body aches, etc. My chances of catching it from her seem pretty high.

Which is stupid. I’m so sick of being sick. It’s exhausting. Oh well. All you can do is keep on keeping on, as the saying goes.

Let’s burn this Wordle to the ground, shall we?

Today’s Wordle Solution Guide (Spoilers!)

The Hint: . . . but that doesn’t mean my eyes will soon be turning red . . . .

The Clue: This word has two vowels and two consonants and one letter that swings both ways.

The Answer:

Today’s Wordle is fitting, as we’re supposed to get a mixture of rain and snow here today.

Yesterday was the perfect Fall day—crisp and cool but still nice enough to walk around in my gym clothes while I worked out in the yard. I have myriad indoor and outdoor projects, but with weather on the way I figured I should (mostly) focus on the yards. I still haven’t gotten to raking the leaves, but I will! Or I’ll have the minions do it.

In any case, my first guess was kind of a fun one, I thought. Belay is a climbing term. Both my kids like to climb at the rock gym. I have a fear of heights and would rather walk into traffic. But it’s still a cool word. And it slashed the number of possible solutions down to just 90.

My second guess was also fun, and quite excellent in many ways—a great reaver of possibilities, cleaving through the remaining options until just two remained. And frankly, I could only think of one: rainy.

The other was carny, apparently, though unless I’d just been to a carnival and had quite literally just been remarking on how rude that carny was in the Ferris wheel line, I doubt I’d ever have come up with that word. I see carn I start to think carnivore or carne asada.

In any case, rainy for the win! And that’s a tie with ye olde Wordle Bot who guessed slate / corny / rainy. What a lucky bot.

Be well, Wednesday Wordlers!

Well it’s voting day. Time to cast a ballot for your candidate of choice. The lesser of two evils. The new kid on the block.

I see politics quite cynically, if we’re being honest. We have, in America, two deeply entrenched parties whose ideologies often represent some form of legacy political positions and whose members are deeply wed to an often unfair and imbalanced system, regardless of party affiliation.

These entrenched, legacy, establishment politicians were, once upon a time, members of an up-and-coming outsider group of some kind (or represented themselves that way, at least). Now they’ve become the old and out-of-touch and must be supplanted by a new batch of future establishment politicians. Out with the old, in with the new—and yet little changes.

Democracy is all fine and good, but there’s no doubt that money speaks louder than anything, and the rich and powerful have enormous sway over our elected officials. Lobbying groups on both sides of the aisle work their black magic. Normal people are too busy with life—kids, work, bills and chores—to really keep up with everything, and too saturated by a divisive news media (and even more divisive social media climate) to think objectively about anything.

I think we all want change, but we rarely have much of an idea on what kind of change, how to enact it, what the long-term consequences might be. Every action has a reaction, but we can’t predict the future. I think that even our political class often enters the field with high ideals and noble goals. But how can you survive that line of work unscathed, ideals intact?

Ah well. Go vote! Vote with your conscience and vote with pragmatism—even if that means not voting. That’s a viable and honest choice sometimes, especially in a two-party system like ours. (South Park, as always, said it best). And don’t worry, the world isn’t ending. When it does, we’ll know it.

I realize I’m being both optimistic and cynical at the same time. What can I say? I am a man of contradictions.

And now for something completely different!

Today’s Wordle Solution & Guide (With Spoilers!)

The Hint: I put this on you because you’re mine.

The Clue: There’s a double letter in this word.

The Answer:

Four isn’t bad. Wordle Bot got his in three, but four is fine. I feel good about these guesses. Cheap got me down to 38, so that was terrific. Moist cut that number in half, but Wordle Bot tells me slant would have been better.

It’s true. I gave it a shot using slant instead (which I wouldn’t normally use since I knew that the ‘A’ was already out) and it brought my total possible solutions down to just one: spell, the final answer. But this seems like the kind of advice you only give as Captain Hindsight. Without knowing that the final answer is spell sure other letters would make more sense than reusing a dud ‘A’ . . . right?

In any case, I got there one guess later and I’m okay with that. Hoorays, Huzzahs and Hell Yeahs all around!

Now go vote! (Or don’t, it’s your choice—just make it for the right reasons).

Oh hey, it’s Monday. Look at that. The weekend went by in a bit of a blur and I only got a quarter of what I wanted to achieve done. At least things warmed up around here and the snow has melted, though it looks like more moisture in the near future.

I’m officially calling this time of year Gloaming now. Autumn seems to have passed a little early, but winter is still a ways off. So Gloaming will do as that in-between season where it’s not really fall or winter, but a time of chilling.

Oh and Daylight Savings Time is back since Congress hasn’t moved to end that nonsense. Of course, if you’re an Arizonan like me you never have to worry about that, though it can be confusing trying to remember that everyone else is now on a different time, especially when (again, like me) you work with people on the East Coast a lot.

Alright, Wordle time! (But think “hammer time” from U Can’t Touch This by M.C. Hammer when you say that in your head.)

Today’s Wordle Solution & Guide (w/Spoilers!)

The Hint: Alpha rather than omega.

The Clue: Unlike yesterday, Wordle Bot’s favorite starting word will do you little good today.

The Answer:

I thought, perhaps, that lightning would strike (or very nearly strike) twice and went with another very-similar-to-slate word for my opener today. It was . . . not great. No worse than slate, however, even though Wordle Bot’s second rather lucky guess means that he beat me today. He got his winning guess with a bit of luck: Diner still left him with several potential answers but he still managed to get begin on guess #3.

It took me four. Point slashed the 415 guesses I had remaining from slake down to 20—still a hefty number, but manageable. I guess I was almost on the same page as the Bot because I went with miner next and then I was a bit puzzled as to how to proceed. After some serious letter-juggling I finally came up with begin, and much to my happy surprise that was the answer! Turns out, it was the only possible answer at this point, so I was bound to stumble on it sooner or later (or make some stupid mistake . . . .)

Huzzah for me and huzzah for you! Have a great week, dearest Wordlers!

What strange times we live in. The world is still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic. Inflation (which corresponds mysteriously with record corporate profits) has made food, lodging and pretty much everything else more expensive than ever. The news is always bleak and depressing.

I suppose much of this sense of doom and dread we feel is exacerbated by social media and the internet and the 24 hour news cycle and all the divisiveness and endless bickering. Maybe things are bad but they could be worse. Maybe we have to find ways to be resilient and not let it get us down—or turn us into the things we claim to hate.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I like unifying things. One thing I love about games is that they really, truly are for everyone. Maybe not every game for everyone, but there are so many different kinds of games—card games, board games, video games, sports, puzzle games—and the one thing that unifies all of those is the fact that in order to participate you have to play (or watch others play, at least).

And play is a wonderful thing. The only other time outside of gaming (or the theater) that we use that word is to describe children. Children play with one another. They don’t even have to be playing games. Just spending time together as children doing nothing, running around outside, getting toys out in your room—it all counts as play. And as we get older we let that go in many respects. Now we “hang out” and we work and we do Very Important Grownup Things.

But at least if you’re doing Wordle every day, for a few minutes you’re playing again. And if that’s not enough (and it’s not enough) there are so many other things to play, from Call Of Duty and Elden Ring to basketball and tennis to cribbage and gin rummy. Play! Play lots! Play with your grownup friends! More play, less hatred. More play, less doom and gloom. Work hard, play hard. All that jazz.

Let’s do this Wordle.

Today’s Wordle Guide & Solution — Spoilers Ahead!

The Hint: Old, musty, dry.

The Clue: You’ll get there in two if you use Wordle Bot’s favorite today.

The Answer:

Well what can I say? I lucked out, but not as much as Wordle Bot and his adoring followers. Anyone who guessed slate today knew exactly what the answer was for Guess #2. I almost guessed stale myself, actually. I was trying to come up with a word that was very close to slate but not slate and I mulled over a few, eventually choosing skate.

If I’d just guessed stale I would have gotten my first ever hole in one! (Play disc golf, it’s a great fun, cheap and healthy way to get outside and play!)

Alas, I guessed skate and ended up with several possible choices remaining. But I knew if I guessed any of them and stale ended up being the right word that I’d be mad at myself and that Wordle Bot would win. Huzzah for me! Stale was right (and not stage or stave).

Wordle Bot also got it in two. We tied. BOOYAH.

We’re almost a week into November already. Halloween is behind us. The next national holiday is Veteran’s Day on Friday the 11th of November. Then it’s Thanksgiving—Turkey Day—and its hanger-on, Black Friday.

Saturday is one of the only weekdays not named after a Norse god. Rather, it’s named after Saturn, a Roman “god of time, generation, dissolution, abundance, wealth, agriculture, periodic renewal and liberation.”

There you go, the title for Sony’s next big single-player adventure AAA PlayStation hit: God Of Time, Generation, Dissolution, Abundance, Wealth, Agriculture, Periodic Renewal and Liberation.

I mean, it’s almost as catchy as God Of War. Almost!

Speaking of which, God Of War: Ragnarök hits shelves in just a few days and is definitely one of the games I’m most looking forward to this year. Between the excellent combat, gorgeous graphics and compelling father-and-son narrative, I thought the previous entry in the series was a real masterpiece. This looks like more of the same, which isn’t such a bad thing.

I mean, it’s no Wordle but still…

Speaking of which, shall we do this thing?

Today’s Wordle Solution & Guide (Spoilers!)

The Hint: To die, to sleep— No more—and by a sleep to say we end The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to. ’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep—

The Clue: There are two different vowels and no repeated letters in this word.

The Answer:

Four! And not a green letter until I got the answer. Drat and confound it, but the Bot got in three with slate / armed / dream. I think he’s cheating!

My first couple guesses were not quite so lucky. Choir only narrowed things down to 429, which is just a tiny bit worse than my opening guess yesterday (which reduced the choices to just 6!) Rebut wasn’t all that great either, leaving me with 56 possibilities. Wordle Bot says lease would have been better, and I can’t help but agree.

Even my third guess, spare, left me with ten words to choose from, but that’s when my luck—what’s the opposite of luck running out?—that’s when my luck turned. I guessed dream and, like a dream come true, I was right! Huzzah!

Have a lovely weekend, weekend Wordlers!

Wordle, Wordle, Wordle and then some more Wordles! Every day another. A Wordle a day keeps the Grim Reaper away!

What do you read, m’lord? Wordles! Wordles! Wordles!

Do you know me, m’lord? Excellent well, you are a fishmonger!

Actually, Hamlet’s famous response to Polonius—words, words, words—is also the title of a very funny short play that I directed when I was in high school. It’s about three chimpanzees—named Milton, Swift and Kafka—who’ve been placed in a room with typewriters. The scientists doing the experiment theorize that given enough time they’ll replicate Shakespeare’s famous tragedy. It’s silly but makes for a great gag with some very witty dialogue, especially for fans of the Bard.

The play was written by David Ives for his collection of One Act plays titled All In The Timing, which I highly recommend to any thespians out there. Lots of good stuff in there.

I am a thespian at heart, a writer by trade. This stuff is my jam.

Wordle is my bread and butter. Let’s do this!

Today’s Wordle Solution (Spoilers!)

The Hint: The way you say most things.

The Clue: There are more vowels than consonants in this word.

The Answer:

So I lost to Wordle Bot today. He got his in three. I felt pretty good about four, but I should have guessed something else for my second guess instead of using the ‘L’ where I knew it went already. Wordle Bot suggests atone which certainly would have ruled out aloft. Then I might have nabbed this in three.

Or I might have guessed aloha since we were talking about Hawaiian food at dinner yesterday. Who knows?

The sad thing is, claim knocked my possible guesses all the way down to 32, and alone brought that number down to just four. But atone would have brought it down to three, and that might have made all the difference.

Still, aloud in four isn’t half bad. I’ll give myself a half-hearted huzzah just to make myself feel better. Huzzah. No exclamation mark allowed.

Play today’s Wordle over at The New York Times. See your Wordle Bot analysis right here.

November is here, but it doesn’t look like we’re getting any cold November rain.

Snow, on the other hand, is in the forecast today. My daughter had Christmas songs playing yesterday also, so between snow and Jingle Bells it’s already starting to feel like Christmastime around here—which I’m okay with.

What can I say? I’m a sucker for Christmas. It’s the hap-happiest time of the year.

In any case, we’re now in Wordle’s 500 stretch, where we’ll remain until February. We still have something like 1800 more Wordles to play before the game runs out of five-letter words, though I suppose it could just start over and mix up the order (or move to six-letter words!)

Let’s tackle today’s shall we?

Today’s Wordle Solution (Spoilers!)

The Hint: When you’re really bad at something, you might be called this.

The Clue: This word has four of the same letters as yesterday’s Wordle.

The Answer:

I chose a new strategy today and it paid dividends, though that’s almost entirely luck. I picked yesterday’s Wordle as my starting guess. It’s a pretty good opener, with two vowels, two common consonants and a ‘Y’ and today it just so happened to get me four yellows.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that it also reduced my possible options down to just four. I chose the obvious next guess, shifting PINE over one spot and plopping an ‘S’ at the top. I figured this might even get me the Wordle in two!

Alas, all four boxes were still yellow, but now I knew that the word couldn’t end in an ‘E’. I didn’t realize only one option remained, but after juggling letters around I came up with inept and, much to my joy and happiness, that was the answer!

Now, I don’t want to call Wordle Bot inept or anything—we can write this off as bad luck—but I kind of destroyed him today, 3 to 5. Wordle Bot’s daily opener, slate, did get him two yellows, but from there it was one miss after another. Titer (impressive vocabulary!) then edict then befit and then, finally, inept. This makes me wonder if Wordle Bot could ever lose at this game. Five is down to the wire.

Have a lovely Wednesday, Wordlers!