NYT Wordle today — answer and my hints for game #1386, Saturday, April 5
Looking for Wordle hints? I can help. Plus get the answers to Wordle today and yesterday.
A new NYT Wordle puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Friday's puzzle instead then click here.
It's time for your guide to today's Wordle answer, featuring my commentary on the latest puzzle, plus a selection of hints designed to help you keep your streak going.
Don't think you need any clues for Wordle today? No problem, just skip to my daily column. But remember: failure in this game is only ever six guesses away.
Want more word-based fun? TechRadar's Quordle today page contains hints and answers for that game, and you can also take a look at our NYT Strands today and NYT Connections today pages for our verdict on two of the New York Times' other brainteasers.
SPOILER WARNING: Today's Wordle answer and hints are below, so don't read on if you don't want to see them.
Wordle hints (game #1386) - clue #1 - Vowels
How many vowels does today's Wordle have?
• Wordle today has vowels in two places*.
* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).
Wordle hints (game #1386) - clue #2 - first letter
What letter does today's Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today's Wordle answer is F.
F is a very common starting letter in Wordle. It ranks seventh behind only S, C, B, T, P and A and overall there are 135 solutions that begin with this letter.
Wordle hints (game #1386) - clue #3 - repeated letters
Does today's Wordle have any repeated letters?
• There are no repeated letters in today's Wordle.
Repeated letters are quite common in the game, with 748 of the 2,309 Wordle answers containing one. However, it's still more likely that a Wordle doesn't have one.
Wordle hints (game #1386) - clue #4 - ending letter
What letter does today's Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today's Wordle is Y.
Y is the second most common ending letter in the game, behind only E. In total, 364 Wordle answers end with a Y.
Wordle hints (game #1386) - clue #5 - last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here's an extra one for game #1386.
- Today's Wordle answer is covered in froth.
If you just want to know today's Wordle answer now, simply scroll down – but I'd always recommend trying to solve it on your own first. We've got lots of Wordle tips and tricks to help you, including a guide to the best Wordle start words.
If you don't want to know today's answer then DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER BECAUSE IT IS PRINTED BELOW. So don't say you weren't warned!
Today's Wordle answer (game #1386)
- NYT average score: 5.0
- My score: 4
- WordleBot's score: 4
- My start word performance: GLADE (113 remaining answers)
- WordleBot's start word performance: CRANE (66)
Today's Wordle answer (game #1386) is… FOAMY.
This is one of the strangest Wordles in a long time. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with FOAMY as a word – it exists, it's in the dictionary – but is it really worthy of being an answer? Is it a word that people often say?
You can turn almost any noun into an adjective by adding a Y at the end: "Oh, look at that table over there, it's so tabley!" But that doesn't mean you should do so. FOAMY feels like it's almost the wrong side of the divide – by all means talk about something being FROTHY, but FOAMY just feels wrong.
Then again, I might be overthinking it.
I can't help but feel this explains the relatively high average score of 4.1 today, though; there's nothing particularly difficult about it as a Wordle answer, in that none of the letters are really uncommon and there are no repeats or similarly spelled alternatives – it's just an unsual word.
And not uncommon in the way that yesterday's KRILL was – that's a word that not many people will think of, but it exists and describes something. FOAMY… less so.
I'm not complaining too much, though, because I scored a four myself. I was helped only slightly by my opening guess, WOUND, which gave me a green O. I then followed up with STORE in order to check whether there was a dreaded OO pattern in there.
There was not, fortunately, but sadly there were no S, T, R or Es either. I still had 45 possibles at this stage, WordleBot told me later, and no real idea of what format I might be looking for.
With U and E ruled out, I figured there might be an A – and that gave me the likes of LOCAL, VOCAL, FOCAL, LOYAL, COACH and POACH.
I also came up with plenty that featured just the one vowel: FOLLY, LOLLY, HOLLY, JOLLY, BOGGY, LOBBY and so on.
I didn't think of anywhere near 45 of them, but CHAMP seemed a good word to further narrow things down, and so it proved – it gave me a green A and M.
So, I had -OAM-, meaning it really had to be an -OAMY word: FOAMY or LOAMY. Neither seemed very likely, but I went with FOAMY as the slightly better choice of the two and guessed correctly.
How did you do today? Send me an email or let me know in the comments.
Yesterday's Wordle hints (game #1385)
In a different time zone where it's still Friday? Don't worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1385, too.
- Wordle yesterday had a vowel in one place.
* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).
- The first letter in yesterday's Wordle answer was K.
K is not a common starting letter in Wordle by any measure. In fact it ranks 22nd out of 26; a mere 20 answers begin with a K.
- There were repeated letters in yesterday's Wordle.
Repeated letters are quite common in the game, with 748 of the 2,309 Wordle answers containing one. However, it's still more likely that a Wordle doesn't have one.
- The last letter in yesterday's Wordle was L.
L is a really common letter to find at the end of a Wordle. There are 155 games that finish with an L, and it ranks as the fifth most likely letter there.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here's an extra one for game #1385.
- Yesterday's Wordle answer is eaten by whales.
Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #1385)
- NYT average score: 5.0
- My score: 4
- WordleBot's score: 4
- My start word performance: GLADE (113 remaining answers)
- WordleBot's start word performance: CRANE (66)
Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #1385) was… KRILL.
Did you know that there are some 700 trillion krill living in the waters of the Southern Ocean around Antartica? It's just as well that there are so many of these shrimp-like creatures, because a single blue whale can apparently eat up to 3.6 million in a day. And I thought I had a problem with portion control.
You may well not have known those facts about krill, or that they are bioluminescent – I didn't, until I looked it up on Google. But I do know that this is a very difficult Wordle, and I was pretty sure of that before WordleBot told me so.
According to the 'Bot, KRILL has an average score of 5.0 at the time of writing – which makes it the third toughest Wordle so far in 2025, behind only ROWER (5.6) and FUZZY (5.1), and level with WAFER. It is very difficult indeed.
As to why that is, well the K at the start doesn't help; it's the seventh least common letter in the game, and the fourth least likely to begin a Wordle answer (alongside J). The repeated L is another problem, albeit this is a likely letter to be repeated compared to most.
However, I suspect that there are two bigger problems.
The first is that KRILL is the only answer out of the 2,309 original solutions that begins with KR. It's simply not a combination you would expect. TR, yes, of course. CR, absolutely. DR and BR and GR and FR and PR – there are plenty of them. Even WR and IR and UR have a few examples each. But for KR, it's just this one.
That may well have meant that your brain simply didn't consider the possibility until everything else had been ruled out.
The second issue is that KRILL is simply an uncommon word in general. I mean yeah, whales probably say it all the time – but the rest of us not so much.
Oh, and there's a third extra problem here (so, a fifth in total), which is that the -RILL format does have a couple of other possibilities: DRILL and TRILL and FRILL and GRILL being the obvious ones, with BRILL also a contender.
Indeed, based on WordleBot's analysis it appears that more people played one of those other -RILL words than KRILL on the fourth guess (44% vs 35%). Many people will have scored a five, and plenty will have got a six. Some poor souls will have lost their streak.
I managed a four myself, thanks to the perfect third guess. I'd started reasonably enough, with GLADE leaving 113 options, then SPOIL cut that to nine.
I found eight of them – TRILL, FRILL, KRILL, CHILL, QUILL, VINYL, TWIRL and WHIRL – but missed TWILL. I then dismissed VINYL, because I remembered it as a past Wordle answer (TWIRL, WHIRL and CHILL have all appeared before too, but I didn't recall those).
I needed a word that would narrow down my seven options, and found it in TRUNK; this was guaranteed to give me the answer in four, so long as I hadn't missed any.
And much to my delight, it worked perfectly. The K at the end turned yellow, which meant KRILL had to be the solution and I solved it in a full guess below the average.
Wordle answers: The past 50
I've been playing Wordle every day for more than three years now and have tracked all of the previous answers so I can help you improve your game. Here are the last 50 solutions starting with yesterday's answer, or check out my past Wordle answers page for the full list.
- Wordle #1385, Friday 4 April: KRILL
- Wordle #1384, Thursday 3 April: SHEAR
- Wordle #1383, Wednesday 2 April: CURSE
- Wordle #1382, Tuesday 1 April: JEWEL
- Wordle #1381, Monday 31 March: BOOTY
- Wordle #1380, Sunday 30 March: QUOTA
- Wordle #1379, Saturday 29 March: SORRY
- Wordle #1378, Friday 28 March: VERSE
- Wordle #1377, Thursday 27 March: SHEET
- Wordle #1376, Wednesday 26 March: ELBOW
- Wordle #1375, Tuesday 25 March: SHELF
- Wordle #1374, Monday 24 March: ANGLE
- Wordle #1373, Sunday 23 March: DOPEY
- Wordle #1372, Saturday 22 March: AMBLE
- Wordle #1371, Friday 21 March: NUDGE
- Wordle #1370, Thursday 20 March: BASTE
- Wordle #1369, Wednesday 19 March: SPARK
- Wordle #1368, Tuesday 18 March: TIMER
- Wordle #1367, Monday 17 March: LASSO
- Wordle #1366, Sunday 16 March: STAMP
- Wordle #1365, Saturday 15 March: LADLE
- Wordle #1364, Friday 14 March: PIECE
- Wordle #1363, Thursday 13 March: CHASE
- Wordle #1362, Wednesday 12 March: MANGO
- Wordle #1361, Tuesday 11 March: TRACK
- Wordle #1360, Monday 10 March: SPITE
- Wordle #1359, Sunday 9 March: GREED
- Wordle #1358, Saturday 8 March: NAVEL
- Wordle #1357, Friday 7 March: TROOP
- Wordle #1356, Thursday 6 March: ALERT
- Wordle #1355, Wednesday 5 March: SCRUM
- Wordle #1354, Tuesday 4 March: CHECK
- Wordle #1353, Monday 3 March: SPEAR
- Wordle #1352, Sunday 2 March: DEITY
- Wordle #1351, Saturday 1 March: HOVER
- Wordle #1350, Friday 28 February: FUZZY
- Wordle #1349, Thursday 27 February: LODGE
- Wordle #1348, Wednesday 26 February: AWARD
- Wordle #1347, Tuesday 25 February: DRYER
- Wordle #1346, Monday 24 February: GLAND
- Wordle #1345, Sunday 23 February: OTTER
- Wordle #1344, Saturday 22 February: CREAM
- Wordle #1343, Friday 21 February: CLOVE
- Wordle #1342, Thursday 20 February: ROACH
- Wordle #1341, Wednesday 19 February: MADLY
- Wordle #1340, Tuesday 18 February: INDIE
- Wordle #1339, Monday 17 February: TRAIL
- Wordle #1338, Sunday 16 February: SUAVE
- Wordle #1337, Saturday 15 February: CROOK
- Wordle #1336, Friday 14 February: DITTY
- Wordle #1335, Thursday 13 February: RUMBA
What is Wordle?
If you're on this page then you almost certainly know what Wordle is already, and indeed have probably been playing it for a while. And even if you've not been playing it, you must surely have heard of it by now, because it's the viral word game phenomenon that took the world by storm last year and is still going strong in 2024.
We've got a full guide to the game in our What is Wordle page, but if you just want a refresher then here are the basics.
Wordle challenges you to guess a new five-letter word each day. You get six guesses, with each one revealing a little more information. If one of the letters in your guess is in the answer and in the right place, it turns green. If it's in the answer but in the wrong place, it turns yellow. And if it's not in the answer at all it turns gray. Simple, eh? It's played online via the Wordle website or the New York Times' Crossword app (iOS / Android), and is entirely free. Crucially, the answer is the same for everyone each day, meaning that you're competing against the rest of the world, rather than just against yourself or the game. The puzzle then resets each day at midnight in your local time, giving you a new challenge, and the chance to extend your streak. The rules of Wordle are pretty straightforward, but with a couple of curveballs thrown in for good measure. 1. Letters that are in the answer and in the right place turn green. 2. Letters that are in the answer but in the wrong place turn yellow. 3. Letters that are not in the answer turn gray. 4. Answers are never plural. 5. Letters can appear more than once. So if your guess includes two of one letter, they may both turn yellow, both turn green, or one could be yellow and the other green. 6. Each guess must be a valid word in Wordle's dictionary. You can't guess ABCDE, for instance. 7. You do not have to include correct letters in subsequent guesses unless you play on Hard mode. 8. You have six guesses to solve the Wordle. 9. You must complete the daily Wordle before midnight in your timezone. 10. All answers are drawn from Wordle's list of 2,309 solutions. However… 11. Wordle will accept a wider pool of words as guesses – some 10,000 of them. For instance, you can guess a plural such as WORDS. It definitely won't be right (see point 4 above), but Wordle will accept it as a guess.What is Wordle?
What are the Wordle rules?
