Today’s Wordle #1576: tips and answers for Sunday, October 12

The year passes too quickly. The leaves turn yellow and orange and fall, covering the streets. It’s beautiful and a little sad. Wistful perhaps. This is one of my favorite times of year, but it’s also the most volatile (along with tree blossom season). Winter, spring, summer or autumn, we have Wordles to solve. Let’s solve today’s problems!

Make sure you also check out my weekend streaming guide for some good TV shows and movies to watch on this laziest of Sundays.

Looking for Saturday’s Wordle? View our guide here.

How to play Wordle

Wordle is a daily word puzzle game where your goal is to guess a hidden five-letter word in six tries or less. After each guess, the game provides feedback to help you get closer to the answer:

• Vegetable: The letter is in the word and in the right place.
• Yellow: The letter is in the word, but in the wrong place.
• Gray: The letter is not in the word at all.

Use these clues to refine your guesses. Every day brings a new word, and everyone around the world is trying to solve the same puzzle. Some Wordlers also play Competitive Wordle against friends, family, the Wordle Bot, or even me, your humble narrator. See the rules for Competitive Wordle at the end of this post.

Today’s Wordle Tips and Answer

Wordle Bot’s starting word: SLATE

My starting word Today: SPARE (354 words remaining)

The tip: Injury.

The clue: This Wordle has two vowels in a row.

Okay, spoilers below! The answer is coming!

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The answer:

Wordle Bot Analysis

Every day I check Wordle Bot to help analyze my guessing game. You can check your Wordle score with Wordle Bot here.

SPARE is normally a good opening bet, but not today. I had 354 words left and all gray boxes. BOINK (one of my second guesses) has whittled that number down to just 11, although that’s still too many to guess in three with little luck. Luckily my luck was with me today. I thought of a few words that had OUN in them, like WOUND and MOUND and MOUNT, and just picked one, hoping it would lead me to at least one remaining solution. Luckily for me, WOUND was the Wordle!

Competitive Wordle Score

I get 1 point for guessing three and 1 for beating the Bot. The Bot gets a 0 for guessing four and a -1 for losing yours. That only widens the gap slightly in October:

Erik: 10 points

Wordle bot: 5 point

How to Play Competitive Wordle

• Guessing in 1 is worth 3 points; guessing in 2 is worth 2 points; guessing in 3 is worth 1 point; guessing in 4 is worth 0 points; guessing in 5 is -1 points; guessing in 6 is -2 points and missing the Wordle is -3 points.
• If you beat your opponent, you get 1 point. In case of a draw you get 0 points. And if you lose to your opponent, you get -1 point. Add it up to get your score. Keep a daily running score or play for a new score every day.
• Friday is 2XP, which means you double your points: positive or negative.
• You can keep a running tally or just play day by day. Enjoy!

Contemporary Wordle Etymology

The word wound comes from Old English ignitedmeaning ‘injury’ or ‘pain’, which is related to Old High German want to and Old Norse And. They are all derived from Proto-Germanic workōmeaning ‘pain’ or ‘sore’. The root probably goes back to the Proto-Indo-European base wen- (“to hit, injure or hurt”).

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