Welcome to the weekend and while we might be on a break from the working week, we certainly don't want to stop playing Wordle.
The popular daily word puzzle has a simple premise. Players need to work out a mystery five-letter word in six guesses or less.
They do that by typing in a word to the Wordle app or website and then a color-coded tile system lets you know if you're on the right track.
The New York Times snapped Wordle up for a "seven-figure" sum from creator Josh Wardle in 2022 after it went viral in October of the previous year.
Recently, the newspaper analyzed 515 million Wordle games with some surprising results.
One in every 250 games is guessed on the first attempt, which is too high of a number to be explained as happening purely by chance.
"This is much more often than you'd expect if you just left things to chance, although not necessarily every case is outright cheating," explained 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."
They also found that one of the most popular first-word options was actually not that helpful in solving the daily puzzle.
"Adieu" was one in the top 30 of most used starting words, but it was in fact the least efficient.
"The strategy seems to make sense: Figure out the vowels, and the other letters will fall into place," they wrote.
"Our new analysis, though, shows that starting with ADIEU or AUDIO does actually put human players at a disadvantage."
They continued: "On average, players who started with ADIEU needed about a third of a turn more to solve their Wordles compared with players who started with SLATE, adding up to 132 extra turns over the course of a year."
If you need a hand solving today's Wordle brainteaser, Newsweek has put together a few hints to help you out. But be warned, the answer appears further down in the article so please scroll with caution.
'Wordle' #1,022, Hints for Saturday, April 6
Newsweek has gathered five clues to help you solve today's Wordle puzzle.
Hint #1: Today's Wordle contains one vowel.
Hint #2: There are no repeated letters.
Hint #3: It is a noun.
Hint #4: The third letter is a consonant.
Hint #5: Today's answer is also the surname of a famous literary character.
'Wordle' #1,022, Answer for Saturday, April 6
Today's Wordle answer is "Finch."
Did you solve today's puzzle? If not, don't fret. You can always try again tomorrow, with Wordle resetting at midnight in your time zone.
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
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