News Today's Wordle answer — solution #245, Saturday, February 19

[PLD UK]

A lucky 2 for me today...
Started as always with STARE, giving 4 greens straight away, which is the best start I can remember!
I could see only 4 options STAGE, STAKE, STALE, STAVE (I missed the repeat T for STATE). First thought was to play a throw-away GLOVE, which would have guaranteed a 3, but in the end the shot at a 2 was too tempting, so it was literally a toss of a coin between G & L, and fortunately fell the right way on STAGE.

 

[RAISE stays]

Took you an awful long time to realise that there is no E in AUDIT. It's not surprising your score is generally higher than Kelly Woo's.

 

[ShawmK]

#613 was a bit of a rout, according to Wordlebot. Apparently about 25% of players couldn't solve it by the final turn - which is the worst I have ever seen.

It is a stupid, stupid word (although not as bad as PARER, a few months ago!). I was lucky to get there in four, but that was only because my third guess was RIPEN. I don't think I would have considered this as a solution otherwise, and it looks like lots of other people felt the same way.

They don't generally include plurals, which I think is perfectly sensible, and I don't think they should include comparatives either. There are too many words that end in ER already (WATER, TIMER, LATER, WAFER, MOVER, RIDER, LOVER, UNDER, AFTER etc, etc) without throwing in even more of them.

 

[ShawmK]

Like you, I always open with RAISE, and my heart sinks when (as today) the R and the E turn yellow. More often than not, that means it's going to be one of the dreaded ___ER words, of which there are far too many.

For my second guess I went with OUTER, which brought in the remaining vowels. I've never been so delighted to see the ER remain yellow! I was very satisfied to get the right answer on my third guess.

 

[PLD UK]

#625:
Well, for me that was a fine example of how a game can be turned on one choice of word...
I stated with the usual STARE - nothing...
Followed up with CLOUD - still nothing.... Argh 10 letters used including 4/5 vowels and not a green or yellow in sight!
The answer surely had to include either I or Y, so wanted something with both, and went with PIGMY (apparently a valid word but not a potential answer) and thankfully at last, 3 greens.
As far as I could see, it was then a 50/50 PINKY or PINNY and luckily went the right way to equal the average.

 

[ShawmK]

I hate to be "that guy", but EXPEL actually does have two "E"s (I counted). Also, SHLEP isn't on the official solutions list, although I'm sure it would be accepted as a guess. To be fair, I've usually seen it spelled SCHLEP, so I would have been very annoyed had it ever been an actual solution.

Mod Edit - Inappropriate content

 

[wensystem3]

So todays answer CIRCA has no repeated letters ?

I must have been to a different school ..LOL

The clues scuppered my attempt completely because I believed the clues

 

[RAISE stays]

I knew not to trust this guy. It's not the first time the clues have misled.

 

[Wwmorton3]

Raver, raced, raked, raved, razed, rangy, rager, and raged are not on the wordle list of possible answers. They are only on the list of possible guesses guaranteed to be incorrect. Unsure why when you listed valid options after your first guess you decided to add the word you guessed, plus others.

 

[ShawmK]

Raver, raced, raked, raved, razed, rangy, rager, and raged are not on the wordle list of possible answers. They are only on the list of possible guesses guaranteed to be incorrect. Unsure why when you listed valid options after your first guess you decided to add the word you guessed, plus others.

The game has (finally) started to depart from that original list in the last month or so. GUANO and SNAFU were both recent solutions, and neither were on The List.

It's actually made the game a bit more interesting for me, since that list was a bit random.

This column has been a lot less interesting ever since Marc McLaren and Kelly Woo left, by the way.

The New York Times have started their own Wordle Review (with a guest columnist each day) which seems to be a lot more enjoyable. Plus, it has a great bunch of regular readers, from around the world!

https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/wordle-review

 

[Wwmorton3]

The game has (finally) started to depart from that original list in the last month or so. GUANO and SNAFU were both recent solutions, and neither were on The List.

It's actually made the game a bit more interesting for me, since that list was a bit random.

This column has been a lot less interesting ever since Marc McLaren and Kelly Woo left, by the way.

The New York Times have started their own Wordle Review (with a guest columnist each day) which seems to be a lot more enjoyable. Plus, it has a great bunch of regular readers, from around the world!

https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/wordle-review

Thanks for sharing that!

 

[wensystem3]

So May 7th is a Saturday???

I nearly skipped today's because it had yesterday's day..... then noticed 7th! Its a Sunday!

 

[PLD UK]

I'm also wondering if a new proof reader is needed... I'm struggling to see any repeated letters in "ETHIC", never mind the TWO stated in the article...

 

[wensystem3]

Where are there two repeated letters in today's solutions. 690?

ETHIC

If you are going to give clues (LOL) please be right.

 

[RAISE stays]

No apology was provided for previous incorrect clues, so I doubt this misinformation will picked up on either. Unlike previously, no e-mail address is provided for direct feedback to the person producing the guide. Not helpful.

 

[ShawmK]

The quality of this daily column has become very poor, I'm sorry to say.

A careless typo in the first sentence of today's entry, and yesterday he said " I typed in SHARK and won the game in four turns," although yesterday's answer was SCARF.

Add this to the growing list of errors and incorrect clues; doesn't anyone proofread this column?

In the beginning, this page was fun to read. Marc McLaren used to write about the daily word and its place in the language, plus he looked into the reactions to the day's game elsewhere on the internet.

The current writer seems oblivious to, well, everything really. He missed several notable Wordle-related events in recent weeks, such as the time that WordleBot actually lost its own game, or the fact that we have now had two solutions that weren't on the original list (the list that Marc McLaren used to compile all the stats used by this website, incidentally).

It seems clear that this column is an afterthought; tossed off as quickly as possible. Perhaps there is someone else on the staff there who might find this column more stimulating?

 

[RAISE stays]

Wordle 696

4th line - Plack. Described as a 15 -16th century Scottish coin. Are you surprised that WordleBot hadn't heard of it?

 

[ShawmK]

From today's column:

"LEAST and SLATE leave eight answers apiece, while SLATE, SHALT and STALE trim that down to seven."

SLATE is a powerful word indeed, if it leaves both seven and eight words! Maybe one day it will win and not win, simultaneously.

 

[wensystem3]

Deserves a warm reception? CLERK?

Is this supposed to be a clue?

 

[raise2]

Wordle #711 - managed to choose AGILE in 2 turns by using RAISE, as usual, for my starting word.
Hey there Alan Martin, why do you never check to see how many wordle possibilities RAISE leaves after using it as a start word?? Is it because Kelly used it as her start word and she's a better player than you?