Today’s Wordle hints and answer — solution #659, Sunday, April 9

Today’s Wordle answer took me ages to figure out. On my last turn, I was sat staring at the grid for at least five minutes, but I did get there in the end. According to the New York Times’ WordleBot(opens in new tab) tool, the average player will complete Wordle #659 in 3.9 turns regardless of whether they play on easy or hard mode (though, of course, there’s no data on how much time they spent on it…)

Each day, we will update this article with Wordle hints and tips to help you find today’s answer. And if the hints aren’t enough, we’ll even give you the answer, in case you’re really stuck or just haven’t had time to complete today’s puzzle. Plus, we are also including an analysis of yesterday’s puzzle, #658, in case you’re reading this in a different time zone.

So be warned: spoilers lie ahead for game #659. Only read on if you want to know today’s Wordle answer!

TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER #659 — HINTS TO HELP YOU SOLVE IT

Our 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 contains two of the five vowels.*
• It has no repeated letters.
• Only one of the letters is in the ten most common characters in the Wordle alphabet.

* By vowel, we mean 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 bigger clues; or, if you just want to know the answer, then skip down further for that.

Alright then, here’s a larger hint: Today’s Wordle answer is a chaotic mess.

WHAT DOES TODAY’S WORDLE START WITH?

The answer to Wordle #659 starts with S, so combined with the hints above you should now have all the clues you need to get the answer and not break a Wordle streak.

OK, it’s now time to scroll down for the answer…

TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER #659, SUNDAY, APRIL 9

So, what is today’s Wordle answer for game #659?

Drumroll, please — it’s SNAFU.

Happy Easter, Wordlers! Today’s puzzle is a real brain teaser to distract from the relentless chocolate. Indeed, I was stuck staring at my remaining letters in utter confusion as I went into my fifth and (as it turned out) final turn.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I began with my pick of the best Wordle start words – RATIO, which turned out to be only slightly less useless than it was yesterday. While I got no letters at all from it then, today it did at least turn the ‘A’ yellow, leaving 213 possible solutions to the puzzle.

All of WordleBot’s top suggestions left fewer than 100 possible answers, so it was definitely a dud of a start. SLATE leaves 30 solutions, LEAST 28 and SLANT just nine.

My next go was equally ineffective. I moved the ‘A’ along and introduced another vowel by playing PLEAD. Once again, the ‘A’ went yellow, and no other letters were revealed. On the bright side, eliminating all these characters was slowly bringing down the number of possible answers, and now just 30 remained.

I tried CHASM next, which WordleBot called “a bit unlucky” as it still left four possible answers. Still, four possible solutions and three turns means that I was well on the way to being home and dry.

I tried SWANK next, which WordleBot praised as “exactly what I would’ve picked in this situation”. Apparently it narrowed it down to just one answer, having eliminated SNAKY and SWANG.

It did, however, take me ages to see what the answer could be. At this point, I knew the mystery word had to be either SNA?? or S?A?N. I stared at it in utter confusion for at least five minutes, typing various letters and then quickly deleting them.

Then it finally hit me: SNAFU.

With hindsight, I should have eliminated all the vowels earlier on, but ‘U’ is by far the least common in the Wordle alphabet, and I couldn’t think of a way of including it with the letters I’d eliminated. Suffice it to say, nobody expects a Wordle answer to end in ‘U’ – indeed, according to our research, this is the only example of it happening.

Hopefully this devious little number didn’t trip you up. Have a great Easter, Wordlers, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

YESTERDAY’S WORDLE ANSWER #658, SATURDAY, APRIL 8

Reading this in a later time zone? The Wordle answer for game #658 was LEDGE

Hello Wordlers. Another tricky puzzle to start the Easter weekend – and for the third day in a row, today’s Wordle started with a ‘L’.

In fact, my pick of the best Wordle start words – RATIO – turned up nothing today. With each of the letters turning gray, 273 answers remained possible from the limited data gleaned via my opening move.

The only consolation was that most of WordleBot’s picks also left a three-figure number of possible solutions. There were some good’uns, though: PLATE would leave 30 and SLATE 26. Both LEAST and LEANT with their two green starting letters would leave only ten possible answers.

With no letters uncovered, I needed to test my two remaining vowels quickly. I did that with FUELS, which as a plural wasn’t ever going to be the answer but would test some common letters. ‘E’ is the most common letter in all of Wordle, while ‘L’ is the sixth most frequently used and ‘U’ comes in at number 11.

While some disagree with playing very unlikely words, WordleBot liked this strategy. “Terrific choice,” it said. “FUELS would have been one of my top picks.”

It left 13 possible answers, according to WordleBot, which was a bit of a surprise, as it took me quite a while to find any with my two yellow letters. Eventually, I played LEDGE and all the letters turned green. Bit of a lucky break – indeed WordleBot gave me a 95% luck score for my troubles.

For completion’s sake, the 12 other possible answers were JEWEL, BEVEL, CELEB, BEZEL, EXCEL, EXPEL, LEVEE, LEVEL, DELVE, BELCH, MELEE and LEGGY. Interesting that only two of them contained a single ‘E’ – and one contained three.

Hope today’s Wordle didn’t trip you up. I’ll be back tomorrow with the Easter Sunday puzzle. Until then, Wordlers.

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 #658: LEDGE
• Wordle #657: LOCUS
• Wordle #656: LEAFY
• Wordle #655: SMASH
• Wordle #654: RATIO
• Wordle #653: FLORA
• Wordle #652: STOCK
• Wordle #651: MARCH
• Wordle #650: EVERY
• Wordle #649: BREAD
• Wordle #648: BESET
• Wordle #647: HURRY
• Wordle #646: GUANO
• Wordle #645: UNTIE
• Wordle #644: VOTER
• Wordle #643: GROUT
• Wordle #642: STAID
• Wordle #641: DUVET
• Wordle #640: TOUGH
• Wordle #639: GLOVE

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).

But if you’re still struggling with Wordle, check out how Tom’s Guide’s Wordle experts have honed their strategy after playing every Wordle so far and losing only once.

We also have plenty of Wordle tips and tricks to share, like how we’ve analyzed every Wordle answer to look for patterns and have some further advice for you there. And if you’re new to the game you should also take a look at our What is Wordle? guide.

WHAT ELSE SHOULD I KNOW ABOUT WORDLE?

Wordle officially launched in October 2021, but actually started in June of that year and celebrated its first birthday on June 19, 2022. (You can read my thoughts on the 5 things Wordle needs to improve if it’s to keep us playing for its second year.)

However, it 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.

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!