Tag: Wordle nyt

Tomorrow is the last day of October and the last Wordle of the 400’s. But why worry about tomorrow when we have today to enjoy?

It’s a bit of a bittersweet Sunday for me. House Of The Dragon is over! I still have The Walking Dead to write about, but that show has fallen on desperately hard times as it limps and stutters its way through its 11th—and final—season.

Thankfully, White Lotus kicks off tonight and I’ll be reviewing that one every Sunday going forward. I loved the first season—it was mayhem and debauchery and just brilliant all around—and I’m hoping this season (which is a new location and cast of characters) is as good.

Then, of course, there is still Andor on Disney Plus, which is the best Star Wars in years and one of the best shows of 2022 for sure. And The Dragon Prince returns to Netflix this coming week for its fourth season.

What shows are you watching these days? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.

Okay, let’s do this Wordle!

Today’s Wordle Solution (Spoilers!)

The Hint: Something of an antiquated dance.

The Clue: There is only one vowel in this word.

The Answer:

So I’ll just get this right out there: Wordle Bot somehow got today’s in just two guesses! That’s definitely some luck but it makes sense. Slate is the bot’s opening guess and contains three of the letters in today’s Wordle (though not in order).

Still lucky, though. It took me four. Aurei was filled with vowels and yet only got me a single yellow box and left me with 423 remaining possibilities.

Goats eliminated the O and shaved that number down to just 8 and gave me a ‘T’ in green. Still a lot, but much more manageable.

Fortunately I ruled everything out but the answer with catty (I considered batty and fatty but it wouldn’t have mattered. With the ‘Y’ also out of the picture there wasn’t much left but waltz, though it took me a bit of time to come up with it. It’s not a word you hear or think about very often.

Four isn’t bad for a trickier word like this! We can’t all be cheating robots, after all!

Have a lovely, lazy Sunday, folks!

Since it’s Thursday—or Thor’s Day—I thought we’d do some trivia. Namely, Thor trivia. So here are some fun facts about the Norse god of thunder.

• Thor was a popular god amongst all the Germanic people pre-Christendom, though the peak of his popularity took place during the late Viking Age in Scandinavia.
• Thor’s nemesis is Jormungand, the gargantuan serpent that encircles the human world, Midgard. The two ultimately face off during Ragnarok. Joining Jormungand in this final battle is Fenrir the wolf, devourer of worlds—and of Odin. Thor and Jormungand will ultimately slay one another. Thor slaughters the snake with furious blows of his hammer, Mjölnir, but ends up covered in so much of the serpent’s venom that he takes only nine more steps before perishing.
• Some gods survive Ragnarok and find themselves in a beautiful new world. Vidar—Odin’s son who takes vengeance upon the wolf Fenrir—along with Vali, Baldur and Hodr. Thor’s own sons, Modi and Magni, are said to survive Ragnarok—depending on which tales you believe.
• One time, Thor’s hammer was stolen by giants and taken to their world, Jotunheim. Loki discovers the hammer in the possession of the chief giant, Thrym who tells Loki that he won’t return the hammer until Freya becomes his wife. This prompts Heimdall to propose an idea: Thor can go to Jotunheim disguised as Freya agreeing to marry the giant chieftain, as a ploy to retrieve the hammer. He does, with Loki at his side, after some reluctance. Thanks to Loki’s silver tongue and trickery, they fool the giant, who places the hammer in “Freya’s” lap to hallow the ceremony. Thor then grabs the hammer and kills Thrym and all the other giant thieves.

And that is your Viking lore for the day! Let’s do the Wordle now, shall we?

Today’s Wordle Solution (Spoilers!)

The Hint: Jim [___] and [___] Grant share this name but not spelled quite this way.

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

The Answer:

Well my guesses today were lucky and then some. Still took three guesses, so this wasn’t two-guess-luck but it was pretty close!

Beyond mere luck, my opening guess—bawdy—was also ironic. I didn’t know it at the time, but the fact that guessing bawdy left me with 69 remaining solutions is, if nothing else, hilariously ironic.

Lucky, too, with two green boxes—though a lot of possible words remaining. I went with fancy for guess number two. I could have tried to eliminate more potential letters rather than go for a word that included my two green letters, but nothing came to mind. Fancy shaved the remaining solutions down to 7.

Now I had a yellow ‘C’ and I was almost 100% certain that it wasn’t the middle letter. That would almost certainly necessitate an ‘H’ and some word ending with ACHY, which rung no bells.

When I put the ‘C’ in the opening box I immediately thought of candy, but both the ‘N’ and ‘D’ were already eliminated. The very next word I thought of was carry, which I was almost certain wouldn’t be the correct answer, but would at least let me know if I was right about the ‘C.’

Lo and behold, I was not only right about the ‘C’ but also about the double R’s—and I carried my own team—of one—across the finish line. Huzzah!

Here we go again, folks. Another day, another Wordle.

We’re nearing Wordle #500, but in reality we’re about one year since the game spiked in popularity. While Josh Wardle released the game in June of 2021, it wasn’t until mid-October that it started gaining steam. And it wasn’t until early 2022 that it truly took off, gaining massive notoriety and ultimately selling to the New York Times for an undisclosed seven-figure sum.

Wordle joins several other popular word games at the New York Times including Spelling Bee and the Crossword Puzzle, but unlike those games it remains free to everyone rather than behind the paywall. Think of it like a gateway drug—for word puzzlers.

I’ve been writing these guides since January of 2022 and while it’s obvious not nearly as many people are playing these days, I’m happy to keep writing them. Besides, this column has become something of a diary for your humble narrator, which is fun.

Okay, let’s do this Wordle.

Today’s Wordle Solution (Spoilers ahead!)

The Hint: When you can’t think clearly, you might describe your brain this way.

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

The Answer:

This was a bit of a lucky trajectory for me today. It didn’t start out great. Choir left me with 388 possible solutions. And while Wordle Bot told me that salon was a wonderful choice, it wasn’t very lucky either. 59 words remained.

My luck turned with gorge, which was something of a risk. Two G’s didn’t strike me as a great idea, but I wanted to test the ‘O’ in the second spot and this would rule out ‘E’ as well. To my great surprise, I got one ‘G’ in yellow and one in green. Huzzah!

At this point I assumed OGG would be int he middle, with a first and last box I needed to figure out. The only word I could think of at this point was foggy (though according to Wordle Bot I could have also picked doggy, boggy and doggo at this point). Thankfully, I was right.

I tied Wordle Bot this time around. The robot picked slate / crony / badge / foggy.

Have a lovely Tuesday, folks!

We’ve made it to the final week of October, a month that I’ve now spent mostly being sick and feeling sorry for myself, which just makes me sick of my own self-pity. Which makes me sick in body and spirit. I’m sick of it. (So that’s body, spirit and mind! Sick all around!)

After this stretch I may go get a COVID booster and a flu shot because I’m paranoid at this point and just can’t handle another two or three week illness. I wan to run! I want to lift weights and get swole! I want to raid English villages with my Viking brethren!

That is a life goal, actually. Well, a version of it anyways. I’m often described as looking the part of a Viking, and I’d love to be at least an extra in some TV show or movie about Vikings (I’m looking at you, Norsemen). But I need to train and get strong and learn how to fight with sword and axe before that can happen. A fondness for mead and beautiful women can only get you so far in life as a Viking warrior.

In any case, Vikings are also known for their great love of word puzzle games, so let’s do today’s Wordle shall we? Skål!

Today’s Wordle Solution (Spoilers!)

The Hint: How are tectonic plates and blame games alike?

The Clue: There are two vowels in today’s word.

The Answer:

Six! This one took me six guesses and had me sweating by the end. And it wasn’t even because I made any grievous mistakes. I think these are all pretty good guesses. Even Wordle Bot said my opening guess—spore—was a good one, just unlucky today leaving me with 378 possible solutions.

Claim was also a good guess, narrowing that field to just 26. But here’s where things got a bit dicey. Bundy (which I thought was a clever way to check for a ‘U’ and a ‘Y’ at the same time) left me with five remaining words and only three remaining rows. I still didn’t have a single letter in a Green box.

When I thought of laugh I thought I was going to tie it all up in a bow and be done, but alas, that was not to be. I had my vowels in green, thank the word gods, but ‘L’ was still yellow. I thought of vault next and while I knew it could be either that or fault, I had to pick one. Four green boxes later, I had one more guess and hoped to high heaven I’d be right.

Fault was a winner and I could finally breathe a sigh of relief. I’m not sure I deserve a huzzah today, but that’s not my fault. Not really. Wordle Bot got this one in four, the smug bastard. Slate / taint / vault / fault. Another notch in the machine’s belt. We’re that much closer to Terminator becoming reality.

Happy Monday, folks. We’re a week out from Halloween!

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps on this petty pace. Wordles, Wordles, Wordles.

In high school I was a thespian. I was in theatre both during and after school and I loved nothing so much as Shakespeare. In my very first play, Macbeth, I got the role of Banquo, which was doubly fun since I also got to be a ghost (Halloween idea: Banquo’s ghost!).

In my second high school Shakespeare play—Much Ado About Nothing—I was cast as the villain, Don John (Keanu Reeves played the same part in the Kenneth Branagh film).

Then we quit doing Shakespeare (officially) so a couple of friends and I put on The Complete Works Of Shakespeare Abridged, which remains one of my fondest theatre experiences—a hilarious, madcap romp through every single Shakespeare play that utilized audience participation to truly great effect. If you ever get a chance to see this performed live, you should jump on it. It’s very fun.

We did the whole thing on our own time, after school, for no school credit. We did manage to sell out a couple shows, however. Pretty dorky, I know, but also a highlight of my high school years.

This was before cell phones and social media and all that distracting nonsense, so we had relatively decent attention spans. Even video games back then were slightly less absorbing. I do miss the 90s’.

Then again, we didn’t have stuff like online writing gigs where you could work from home and write about Wordle! So huzzah to the present!

Today’s Wordle Solution (Spoilers!)

The Hint: A handy receptacle for foamy beer.

The Clue: The vowels in this word are back-to-back.

The Answer:

This was a pretty lucky day for me, especially since I don’t think I would have guessed the correct answer without everything lining up precisely how it did with my first two guesses.

Twice popped into my head because of last night’s House Of The Dragon. There are a pair of characters named Erryk and Arryk Cargyll. I was thinking twins but decided against it and chose twice instead, which was—in hindsight—a wise maneuver.

This narrowed my options to just 33, with three yellow boxes. For guess two, however, I decided to use all new letters in the hope of netting the last two. Lucky for me, both the ‘S’ and the ‘N’ landed in green boxes, which allowed me to arrange my first three letters in the remaining middle spots.

At this point, there was really only one option left—though I had forgotten that stein could mean a “large earthenware beer mug” and honestly just associated it with the ending of many Jewish names like Goldstein and Bernstein and so forth.

But hey, whether it’s your last name or a mug of frothy ale, it’s all good to me! Huzzah!

Here in the mountains of Northern Arizona it has been both beautifully autumnal and rather drizzly, with a pall of grey rainclouds having moved in Saturday. Grey and yellow are the colors of the weekend:

This is the sort of weather that makes one want to sit by a window with a cup of hot coffee or tea and stare out into nothing, or curl up with a good book (or a puzzle or two) and a cozy blanket. Light a fire in the hearth, soup on the stove, bread in the oven. All the smells and flavors of Fall. Maybe a candle or two.

In other words, this is the perfect time of year—other than this damnable cold! I’m still hacking up a lung every few minutes and it’s been nearly a week. Sigh. Tis the season for all these things, I suppose.

Let’s Wordle, shall we?

Today’s Wordle Solution (Spoilers!)

The Hint: Just Shoot Me! David

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

The Answer:

I very rarely get Skill ratings in the 90’s for all my guesses, but today Wordle Bot was feeling generous. 94 Skill for my first guess—trial—96 for my second guess—shone—and 99 Skill for my third guess, which is also the correct answer—spade.

On the other hand, my luck was rather hit or miss. My first guess left me with 400 possible solutions—not great! But My second slashed that down to 5. My third guess was pretty lucky, but it was also the very first word I came up with—I didn’t even consider alternatives like sauce or space.

I got it in three, which ended up being a tie with Wordle Bot, even though he had three of the letters in green on his very first guess (which is still slate these days). So I’ll just give myself a pat on the back for starting out worse and rising to the occasion nevertheless. Huzzah!

It would have been fitting, in the month of October, to have the 13th fall on a Friday rather than a Thursday. Not only is Friday the 13th an unlucky day, it’s a series of horror/slasher movies. And the 13 is the inverse of 31, with the 31st being Halloween. All I’m saying, is it would have been nice but it was not to be.

Next year, however, there will be a Friday the 13th in October. After that, the next will fall in 2028.

That’s quite a number, isn’t it? 2028. Six years from today I’ll be closer to 50 than 40 and I’m really not sure how to feel about that. Then again, that assumes I’m still around—or that any of us are. Will we survive the wars and changing climate? The next pandemic? The zombie apocalypse? The alien invasion?

Will we survive human nature?

These are questions that nobody can answer, but we can solve today’s Wordle. Baby steps, as Bob likes to say. Baby steps.

Today’s Wordle Solution (Spoilers!)

The Hint: Not uneven or unfair.

The Clue: There are three vowels in this word.

The Answer:

Another lucky day for your humble narrator, it seems. It occurred to me after I used blade that perhaps I’ve used it before, but at a certain point when you try to use a different word every day you lose track.

Either way, blade was pretty good today—as good as slate would have been, in any case. My second guess—scour—may have only added one yellow box to the three I already had, but it was enough. Wordle Bot later informed me that it had brought my possible solutions down to just 1, after blade brought the 2,309 down to just 50.

Admittedly, figuring out what that word was ended up being a bit tricky. I had to scour my brain for a good long while. I figured it would be a vowel at the front but for a spell all I could think of was alure which was obviously wrong.

At last, I came to equal for the win! And better still, I later discovered that I’d once again beaten my old rival and arch-enemy, Wordle Bot:

Ha! Hahahahahah! You lose Wordle Bot! Bahahahahaha!

Another day, another Wordle. Wednesday brings us very near the halfway point of October, and it sure is starting to feel very autumnal outside. The air is crisp, the leaves are changing, and I have my first cold of the season (though thankfully not COVID again!)

Today’s word follows a trend that I’ve noticed lately of somewhat more challenging Wordles than average. I suppose it’s all random, but some of these have been pretty tricky, and today’s is no exception. In fact, it may be the trickiest I’ve seen in weeks.

That’s a good thing! The more challenging the better, I say. Wordle is, by its very nature, a fairly simple game compared to more elaborate puzzle games like Spelling Bee or Quordle. That’s part of its charm, of course. It’s not too time-consuming. But I do like the challenge of an especially tricky word.

So let’s take a look, shall we?

Today’s Wordle #480 Solution (Spoilers!)

The Hint: Atomic.

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

The Answer:

Yeah, like I said—tough word. My first guess wasn’t great but it wasn’t terrible, either. Anger left me with 184 possible solutions and I’ve definitely had worse starting guesses before. Unfortunately, sound only reduced that number to 10. Again, not terrible or great. Just fine, whatever.

Thick reduced the possible solutions to 2 (though of course I only discovered any of these facts when I went to check my Wordle Bot analysis after the fact). I admit, at this point I was a little stumped. I had four letters: ‘O’ in green and ‘N’ ‘I’ and ‘C’ in yellow. I fiddled with placing both the ‘N’ and ‘C’ in the first box, brought in some other consonants and nothing clicked. I guess conic was the other possible answer here, but I went with ionic and, surprisingly, got the win.

‘Ionic’ is a surprising correct answer—a word I wasn’t expecting to even be a Wordle solution. But I guess it’s fitting. The term means “relating to, composed of, or using ions.” It’s something you’d use in chemistry, which is timely: I just finished watching Breaking Bad with my daughter—my very favorite show about chemistry!

Well, October is a third of the way over already. We’re exactly three weeks away from Halloween and a night of costumes, candy and merrymaking. Halloween also marks the 499th Wordle. After that, we’ll have just over 1,800 remaining. That’s about five more years of Wordles.

(I miscalculated originally and thought #500 fell on Halloween, but it’s actually November 1st).

After that, we’ll see. The New York Times could start over, or bump the game up to six-letter words, which is something I’ve been hoping we’d get at some point.

Six-letter Wordles would be a bit harder, changing the nature of the game in a big way without making up new rules.

In any case, let’s take a look at today’s Wordle #478.

Today’s Wordle Solution (Spoilers Ahead!)

The Hint: To take delight in something.

The Clue: This word begins with a vowel.

The Answer:

Dang, five guesses. Yesterday I was so happy that I’d gotten the answer in three, while Wordle Bot got the answer in five. Now, the tables have turned. Wordle Bot, using slate, got the answer in three, with diner as guess #2.

My opening guess left me with 578 possible choices, but I was down to 10 after following up quiet with alone. Ten is still a lot, unfortunately, and demon—while eliminating eight possibilities—still left me with two and I picked the wrong one. Envoy felt right but enjoy ended up being the correct answer.

No huzzah for me today!

Be well, dear Wordlers! Have a happy Monday!

Well we made it, folks. The weekend is here at last, and not a moment too soon! I’m kind of beat and hoping to get some good R&R this weekend, though I often find I’m even busier on weekends with the TV show release schedule being what it is.

More House Of The Dragon this Sunday. More Rings Of Power last night. I need to catch up on Andor, which I quite like, and other new shows like Midnight Club are dropping. And then there are all the games I’m behind on.

In any case, one game I do play every day is Wordle so let’s get to it!

Today’s Wordle Solution (Spoilers Ahead!)

The Hint: Vim’s frequent companion.

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

The Answer:

It’s always kind of funny when you go from all yellows (for three guesses this time) to a full spread of green.

Overall, I’d say this was a pretty average set of guesses. Nothing spectacularly good or bad. 137 remaining solutions after rabid was fine, and that number dropped to just 9 after south.

I was expecting a green box to pop up when I guessed groin but instead moved all the pieces around into a new yellow arrangement. From here, there was only one option left, and while it wasn’t immediately obvious, once I thought of it I was pretty sure it would be the right answer. Sure enough, vigor for the win!

Huzzah!

So today marks a strange moment for my relationship not just with Wordle but with Wordle Bot—my nemesis who I will someday vanquish in hand-to-hand combat.

I think Wordle Bot got it wrong when analyzing my guesses today, and I want you—dearest Wordlers—to let me know if I’m crazy or on to something here.

So let’s get right to it, shall we?

Today’s Wordle Solution (Spoiler Warning)

The Hint:

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

The Answer:

This was a weird one, though not so much because of the word but because of Wordle Bot’s confusing response to my guesses.

It started out fine. I picked hound which Wordle Bot said was both lucky (bringing my total possibilities down to 53) and distinct (almost nobody chose it because almost nobody is as fond of The Hound from Game Of Thrones as me).

My second guess was extremely lucky. Daisy, which makes me think of Val Kilmer’s Doc Holiday from Tombstone—“You’re a daisy if you do”—brought my remaining solutions down to just one.

But here’s the problem. I could think of two at this point, and I wasn’t sure which to go with. I chose daddy because I thought it would be funny if the word had three D’s but that was incorrect so I went with dandy next and got the win.

When I went through Wordle Bot’s analysis, however, I became confused. Here’s what the evil little robot told me about my third guess:

“There was only one possible solution left—and this wasn’t it. (DADDY couldn’t be a possible solution given what was learned from your previous guesses.)”

Wait just a gosh-darn second. What did we learn in the first two guesses that eliminates daddy but leaves dandy as an option? The yellow ‘D’ at the end indicates that the ‘D’ can’t be in that box, but clearly left it open in the other four. The final word had a ‘D’ in box #4, so what exactly made box #3 not an option for a third ‘D’?

Previously we ruled out the ‘U’ and the ‘I’ in the third box, but never a ‘D’ and there was no guess prior to this one that had more than one ‘D’ at all. Unless I’m just missing it, I think Wordle Bot is just plain wrong on this one. What do you think?

Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.