It's time to play Wordle, and Newsweek is once again here to give you a helping hand.
A new five-letter word appears everyday on the Wordle app or website, and players need to guess what it is in six attempts or fewer. You begin by putting in the word you think it might be, and a color-coded tile system will tell you what you got right and what you didn't as the letters flip over to give you the results.
A green tile means the letter is correct; yellow tells you it does appear in the word but is just in the wrong spot; and, finally, a gray tile shows that letter does not appear in the word at all.
The New York Times purchased the game in 2022 from creator Josh Wardle and it analyzed 515 million games of Wordle and found some interesting trends.
One unexplainable finding was that one in every 250 games is guessed on the first attempt.
"This is much more often than you'd expect if you just left things to chance, although not necessarily every case is outright cheating," said authors Josh Katz and Aatish Bhatia for The New York Times.
"Some may be using a new window to make additional guesses after failing to solve the puzzle in six tries. Some may be re-entering a solution they found on a different device to maintain a streak, or to test a technical issue. Others may have had the answer spoiled, or, yes, may have looked it up."
Other research done by Wordsrate found the most-common starting letter is S, with 15.81 percent of answers beginning with this letter.
The next most-common starting letter is C, with 8.58 percent, and B is in third place with 7.49 percent. However, S is the starting letter for 167 more words than C, of which only 8.58 percent of possible Wordle answers start with the consonant.
If you need a hand solving today's Wordle puzzle, Newsweek has put together some hints to help you out. But be warned; the answer appears at the end of this article, so scroll with caution.
'Wordle' #1,028, Clues for Friday, April 12
Hint #1: Today's Wordle contains one vowel.
Hint #2: There are no repeated letters.
Hint #3: It is an adjective.
Hint #4: The third letter is a vowel.
Hint #5: Today's answer starts with the letter "W."
'Wordle' #1,028, Answer for Friday, April 12
The answer to today's Wordle is "whiny." The Merriam-Webster dictionary says the word means "having a high-pitched, shrill or plaintive quality" or "characterized by or given to complaining."
Wordle resets at midnight in your local time zone. Until then, why not give these other word puzzle games a try?
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Shannon Power is a Greek-Australian reporter, but now calls London home. They have worked as across three continents in print, ... Read more
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.
