Today's Wordle Hints and Answer — March 28, 2026
Stuck on today's Wordle? This page has six spoiler-free hints for puzzle #1,743, arranged from broad to very specific. Reveal them one at a time and head back to the game after each — the fewer you need, the sweeter the solve.
If you'd rather skip straight to the answer, it's waiting further down alongside the word's definition, a difficulty breakdown, and a few strategy pointers for tomorrow.
Wordle Hints Today
Each hint below reveals a little more about today's word. Start with Hint 1 for a gentle nudge, then work your way down only as far as you need to. The later hints get very specific.
How Many Vowels in Today's Wordle
Vowel count is one of the most efficient early filters in Wordle. Five-letter English words contain between one and four vowels, and knowing the exact count allows players to eliminate a significant portion of the remaining candidate pool.
The answer is an adjective with 3 vowels in it. Three or more vowels is above average for a five-letter word. Words like ADIEU or AUDIO can help you identify which vowels appear.
Wordle Starting Letter Today
The starting letter ranks among the highest-value clues in Wordle because word frequency is not evenly distributed across the alphabet. Certain initial letters appear far more often than others, and confirming the first letter substantially narrows the list of possible answers.
Here is your second hint: the first letter is A. The word uses at least one letter more than once. With this information and your tile feedback, you should be able to start narrowing things down.
Wordle Last Letter Today
The final letter reveals a word's morphological structure. Common endings such as -ED, -ER, -LY, and -AL account for a large share of Wordle answers. When the last letter is known, players can focus on suffix-based word families, reducing guesswork and conserving remaining attempts.
Hint 3 reveals that the word ends with T. You now know the first letter (A) and the last letter (T). The three middle positions are still open. Think about letter combinations that commonly appear between these two.
Does Today's Wordle Have Double Letters
Repeated letters account for roughly 15% of Wordle answers, yet most players default to guesses that assume five unique characters. Knowing whether today's puzzle contains a doubled letter changes the solving approach and can prevent wasted guesses in the later rounds.
Regarding double letters: yes, there is a pair of identical adjacent letters in today's word. As for vowels, the word includes A and O. Combined with what you already know, this should narrow things down.
Second Letter of Wordle Today
The second letter is statistically the most difficult position to identify through standard elimination. Combined with the previous hints, this information leaves only a small number of valid candidates and should position the solver to reach the answer in one or two additional guesses.
Hint 5 reveals that the second letter is F. Your pattern is A F _ _ T. With the first, second, and last letters all known, you only have two positions left to figure out. Think about what fits.
For the last hint, consider the definition: "(predicative) That is on foot, in motion, in action, in progress." This adjective should now be identifiable given all the letter clues above.
What Is Today's Wordle Answer
If the hints weren't enough, or you just want to confirm your guess, tap below to reveal today's answer.
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What Does Today's Wordle Mean
Once you've solved the puzzle (or peeked at the answer above), here's the word's full dictionary entry — part of speech, pronunciation, and meaning.
/əˈfʊt/
(predicative) That is on foot, in motion, in action, in progress.
How Hard Is Today's Wordle
We rate every puzzle on a scale from Easy to Hard based on letter frequency, vowel count, and repeated-letter patterns. Here's where today's word lands.
Common letters. Repeated letters
Best Wordle Starting Word
Your opening guess matters more than you think. A strong starter covers common vowels and high-frequency consonants, giving you the most information from a single row of tiles. Here are the words that consistently perform best.
SLATE includes three high-frequency consonants (S, L, T) paired with the two most frequent vowels in five-letter English words (A, E). As demonstrated by computational analysis, SLATE consistently ranks as one of the top 5 openers for maximizing information gained from each guess.
CRANE incorporates the consonants C, R, and N with vowels A and E. A New York Times analysis indicated CRANE as one of the best mathematically optimal opening guesses. Approximately 27% of Wordle answers include the consonant R, so CRANE can serve as a very efficient diagnostic tool.
TRACE identifies five of the most commonly used letters in Wordle solutions and incorporates T, R, and C along with two vowels. The possible combinations of T, R, and C with two vowels provide diagnostics for some of the most common Wordle solution patterns such as -ACE, -ATE, and -ARE that represent a considerable amount of Wordle answers.
AUDIO is the top vowel-diagnostic opener, testing four of the five typical vowels with a single guess. Although AUDIO provides little diagnostic capability regarding consonants, the vowel information usually allows for elimination of 60-70% of potential words after one guess.
RAISE incorporates R, S, and three vowels (A, I, E) to provide comprehensive coverage of letters. S appears in almost 36% of Wordle answers, and the three-vowel configuration also provides diagnostic information related to the location of vowels within the first guess.
STARE employs the same high-value letters as SLATE but with a different configuration. It examines S, T, A, R, and E, the same five letters that are among the six most frequently appearing letters in the Wordle answer list. Simulations have shown that STARE will reduce the average number of guesses required to solve a puzzle to under four.
Quick Strategy Tips
- Start with an opener that contains high-frequency vowels (A, E) and consonants (R, S, T, L, N). In terms of optimizing the diagnostic power of your initial guess, the first goal is to maximize letter coverage rather than to optimize positional information. By eliminating the greatest number of candidate words from the answer pool through testing of five common letters, you achieve greater efficiency.
- Use the grey tile as a confirmation of eliminated letters. When you reuse a letter that has already been determined to be grey, you waste one of your five diagnostic slots for a guess. Tracking the letters that you eliminate from consideration is equally important as tracking the letters that are part of the answer.
- Use the yellow tile to determine that the letter is located somewhere in the answer but in a different position. When you make the next guess, put that letter in a new column. One of the fastest ways to progress from having only partial information to solving the puzzle completely is to rapidly and efficiently utilize the letters that you know are part of the answer.
- When you have narrowed down the list of candidate words to a manageable size, consider common English word patterns such as -IGHT, -ATCH, -OUND, and -TION. Understanding the structure of these patterns will allow you to more quickly narrow down the possibilities than simply testing letters individually.
- If you are left with multiple candidate words and do not want to make an uninformed random choice between them, consider making a diagnostic guess that can distinguish between the options, even if that guess is not likely to be the actual answer. If you can eliminate two or three possibilities through one guess, that will save you time compared to guessing randomly.
- By practicing in hard mode, where you are forced to use all of the letters that you have confirmed to be in the answer (either green or yellow) in every subsequent guess, you develop a habit of precise positioning, which will transfer to better performance when playing in normal mode.
Yesterday's Wordle Answer
Missed yesterday's puzzle? The answer was revealed as puzzle #1742. Wordle never reuses past answers, so you can cross this one off for good.
I
V
O
R
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Puzzle #1742
Past Wordle Answers
Wondering if a word's already been used? We've got you covered. Browse the recent answers below. It's a handy way to rule out repeats and pick up on letter patterns that might give you an edge today.
| Date | Puzzle | Word | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 27 | #1742 | IVORY | Medium+ |
| Mar 26 | #1741 | BEFIT | Medium |
| Mar 25 | #1740 | WISER | Medium |
| Mar 24 | #1739 | BROOD | Medium+ |
| Mar 23 | #1738 | SERIF | Medium |
| Mar 22 | #1737 | BASIL | Medium |
| Mar 21 | #1736 | SLICK | Medium+ |
| Mar 20 | #1735 | OASIS | Medium |
| Mar 19 | #1734 | REHAB | Medium |
| Mar 18 | #1733 | AMPLY | Medium+ |
| Mar 17 | #1732 | CLASP | Medium+ |
| Mar 16 | #1731 | DRAMA | Medium+ |
| Mar 15 | #1730 | GRADE | Medium |
| Mar 14 | #1729 | ANKLE | Medium |
How to Play Wordle
New to Wordle? Don't worry, you'll pick it up in no time. It's one of those games that's easy to learn but surprisingly tricky to master, and here's everything you need to get rolling.
Wordle Rules
Open the daily puzzle
Navigate to the Wordle game page on The New York Times website. A new puzzle is published every day at midnight in your local time zone. All players worldwide receive the same word, which allows for score comparison without spoiler risk.
Enter your first guess
A good starting word will include high-frequency letters (such as those found in SLATE, CRANE, or TRACE) to test both vowels and consonants. Using one of these words will give you the most possible information after your first guess.
Read the color-coded feedback
For each guess you make, you will get some color based on how close your guess was to the solution. If a letter is green, then it is located in the exact spot that you placed it in your guess. When a letter turns yellow, the letter appears somewhere else in the solution but not where you guessed it to be. Any grey letters you place in the solution are not present in the solution at all.
Refine your next guess
Using the information you have received from your last guess, you can now make an educated guess using all of the available information. Try to keep your green letters in the spots they were in your previous guess, try to move your yellow letters to different spots in the solution, and do not use any of your grey letters. Each guess you make should help narrow the solution down.
Solve within six attempts
There are a total of 6 guesses allowed in the game. Typically, experienced players complete the game in either 3-4 attempts by choosing a good starting word and being systematic about eliminating possibilities after each attempt. Do not just randomly guess letters in the hopes of getting lucky. Instead, each of your guesses should be based on what you learned from the previous guess.
Share your results
After you have completed the game, the game provides a spoiler-free grid showing the colored squares of the game grid. This grid can be easily posted on social media or sent via text message. The grid shows the number of guesses made to complete the game and the color pattern of the solution. However, none of the squares in the grid will show the actual letter, so other players can determine if they completed the game more efficiently than you.
What the Colors Mean
Green
If a letter is green, then it is located in the exact spot that you placed it in your guess. It should remain fixed in this position for all subsequent guesses.
Yellow
When a letter turns yellow, the letter appears somewhere else in the solution but not where you guessed it to be. Move it to a different position on the next guess to locate its correct placement.
Grey
Any grey letters you place in the solution are not present in the solution at all. Exclude them from all future guesses to maximize the information gained from remaining attempts.
Frequently Asked Questions About Wordle
Wordle is a free daily word puzzle published by The New York Times. Players have six attempts to identify a five-letter word. After each guess, color-coded feedback indicates which letters are correct and in the right position (green), correct but misplaced (yellow), or not in the word at all (grey). The puzzle resets daily at midnight, and every player worldwide receives the same word on any given day.
Each Wordle puzzle gives you six chances to figure out the solution. As long as your guess is a valid English word, you'll receive colored tile feedback after each guess to help you choose your next word. Although having six chances seems a lot, if you're trying to solve some of the tougher words with less common letter combinations, you may end up guessing until the last possible second.
You don't need to create an account, subscribe to anything or pay to play Wordle on The New York Times' website. The New York Times does offer a Games subscription, which includes other games like Spelling Bee and Connections, but Wordle itself is completely free and there's no paywall to access it.
A new puzzle goes live every day at midnight in the player's local time zone. Every player around the world gets the same puzzle on the same day. The game takes into account your local time zone, so whether you live in the United States, Australia or somewhere else, you'll always get the same puzzle at the same time. Because everyone gets the same puzzle, it makes it easy to discuss results, compare scores and avoid spoilers.
Once midnight hits and the new puzzle becomes available, the old puzzle is gone for good on the official site. You can find third-party websites that keep archives of past Wordle puzzles though. These sites allow you to go back and practice your puzzle-solving skills with older puzzles.
If you run out of attempts and still haven't solved the puzzle, the game will reveal the answer to you. When the answer is revealed, your win streak will reset to zero and a new puzzle will become available the next day. This daily cycle gives you a chance to start fresh every morning.
Try to use a word that contains some of the most commonly used letters in English words. Some great starting words include SLATE, CRANE, and TRACE. Remember to never reuse letters that you've already eliminated (letters that have turned grey). Also, pay close attention to yellow tiles, which tell you a letter is in the answer but in a different position. One of the best ways to increase your chances of solving the puzzle quickly is to move those yellow letters to new spots on subsequent guesses.
There isn't an official Wordle app for mobile devices or computers. The game is accessed through a standard web browser on the New York Times website. Be careful when searching for Wordle in the App Store or Google Play Store because some developers have taken advantage of the popularity of the game to sell their own versions. These are not officially affiliated with The New York Times or the original Wordle game.
The New York Times has added a feature called Hard Mode that changes the way you solve the puzzle. In Hard Mode, you must use all of the letters that you know are in the puzzle (the letters you've identified with green and yellow tiles) in every single subsequent guess. This limits your ability to explore multiple possibilities in the earlier guesses, but forces you to develop a strong sense of the overall pattern of the puzzle. Hard Mode can be turned on or off in the game settings.
Josh Wardle is a software developer who built Wordle as a personal project for his wife. He released the game in October 2021 and it quickly gained popularity. Within two months, Wordle was being played by approximately 2 million users per day. In January 2022, Josh sold the game to The New York Times, and it has remained free for all users.