NYT Wordle today — answer and my hints for game #1327, Wednesday, February 5

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 #1327) - clue #1 - Vowels

* 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 #1327) - clue #2 - first letter

P is a very common first letter among Wordle answers. It's the fifth most common in the alphabet and begins 141 solutions in total.

Wordle hints (game #1327) - clue #3 - repeated letters

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 #1327) - clue #4 - ending letter

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.

Wordle hints (game #1327) - clue #5 - last chance

Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here's an extra one for game #1327.

• Today's Wordle answer is a foot-operated control.

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 #1327)

• NYT average score: 3.8
• My score: 5
• WordleBot's score: 3
• Best start word performance*: PLANE (4 remaining answers)
• My start word performance: GUILT (257)

* From WordleBot's Top 20 start words

Today's Wordle answer (game #1327) is… PEDAL.

Sometimes Wordle can just be so frustrating. Today was one of those days – I didn't play badly, but had very little luck and ended up with a five – a five! – against an overall average of 3.8. WordleBot scored a three; such an annoying little digital nerd.

PEDAL does not have any of the hallmarks of a difficult answer, and I doubt too many others will finish with a five or six. I may just have to write this off as a bad day at the office.

I don't want to do that, though, so instead I'll forensically examine my guesses in a burst of self-recriminatory anguish.

The first guess was not my fault, at least. I use a random opening word, and today my generator gave me GUILT – which could be a great word but which was unlucky today (you'll see those words written again, trust me) and which left 257 possibles. CRANE, WordleBot's opener, was at 107 – so better, but not great either.

On the second guess, however, I played SNARL and that was a mistake. Not a terrible one – 82 for skill – but it had an expected number of solutions of 16. CANOE, the 'Bot's choice, would have been expected to cut the options to 10. PARSE, its second choice, would have expected to cut them to 12. So I could have done better.

Luck – or rather, bad luck – was a bigger factor though. My actual number of remaining answers for SNARL was 17, so one worse than the prediction. The result for PARSE? Just three.

My third guess was great. I played LACED, having identified that lots of my remaining answers contained a C and/or D – for instance PEDAL, MEDAL, MODAL, DECAL for the D, and the last one of those plus FOCAL, LOCAL, CABAL, FECAL and VOCAL for C.

WordleBot loved this, but again it was unlucky, leaving two solutions rather than only the one. And of course on the 50/50 – between MEDAL and PEDAL – I guessed wrong first time and had to settle for that five.

So, what did I do wrong? Well, first off, I was unlucky. That isn't my fault as such, but it's nobody else's fault either. It must be karma paying me back for doing something wrong.

More importantly, I didn't optimize that second guess. It was a silly decision not to include a second vowel, particularly as I didn't have any at that stage and given that I hadn't played E yet. Must. Do. Better.

How did you do today? Send me an email or let me know in the comments.

Yesterday's Wordle hints (game #1326)

In a different time zone where it's still Tuesday? Don't worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1326, too.

• Wordle yesterday had 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).

• The first letter in yesterday's Wordle answer was T.

T is one of the most common starting letters in the game, beginning 149 of Wordle's 2,309 answers. That gives it a ranking of fourth in the alphabet, behind only S, C and B.

• 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 H.

H is a regular visitor to the final spot in a Wordle word. It occurs 137 times at the end of a Wordle answer, making it the sixth most common letter there.

Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here's an extra one for game #1326.

• Yesterday's Wordle answer is found in the mouth.

Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #1326)

• NYT average score: 4.0
• My score: 4
• WordleBot's score: 4
• Best start word performance*: TRACE (23 remaining answers)
• My start word performance: RESET (146)

* From WordleBot's Top 20 start words

Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #1326) was… TOOTH.

I had a real sense of deja vu when I saw today's answer, but on further investigation there was no reason for it. I thought that maybe we must have had a similar word before, but BOOTH – the most obvious one – hasn't yet been an answer, and neither has TEETH. Then I thought maybe it was another dental word, but MOUTH hasn't appeared either, though SMILE has. GUMMY, too, if you count that. But I'm fairly sure that wasn't the cause of my confusion.

On reflection, it's probably the double-O that stuck with me, because I hate that format and rarely get a good score when dealing with it. This one is of course sandwiched between a pair of Ts, making it even more complicated to solve.

TOOTH is actually one of only 38 original solutions to contain a double repeat – a fact I reveal in my analysis of every Wordle answer. It's the 20th such word to appear, so we are a little over halfway through that little sub plot.

Somewhat surprisingly, TOOTH doesn't have a super-high average score: it's currently at 4.0, whereas yesterday's REVUE finished at 4.3. Those repeated letters should really have made it harder, but on the flip side both T and O are common letters in general and also very likely to be repeated. H is less common, but the TH combination at the end is a regular guest in the game.

I found one of the two Ts right at the start, when my opening guess RESET gave me a yellow one and ruled out three other common letters. The fact that I knew there was no S included was helpful, too, as it meant I didn't need to consider ST at the start. In fact, it meant the T was very likely to go either at the start itself or at the end followed by an H.

I didn't play for either of those next, though. I still had 100-plus words to choose from (146, to be exact), so instead went with PITHY. This had the advantage of playing the H but also a Y that might have come into the reckoning for T---Y words such as TACKY, TALLY, TANGY, TODAY, TABBY and TOADY.

PITHY was not a terrible choice, but not the best either – WordleBot rated it at 84 out of 99, whereas TITAN would have scored 99. Worse still, it was also unlucky in leaving me 13 possible answers. But I was fairly pleased, however, because I had that TH combination confirmed.

That made it easier to find most of those 13 options, although I soon realized not all were TH words as such: TOUCH and TOUGH were in there too, alongside the likes of CLOTH, MOUTH, THANK, THINK, THUMB, THONG, QUOTH, BOOTH, MONTH and LOATH.

I decided to go with TOUGH, because it would come the closest to guaranteeing me a four. And to my relief, it did that – giving me the TO--H format that left TOOTH as the only remaining solution.

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 #1326, Tuesday 4 February: TOOTH
• Wordle #1325, Monday 3 February: REVUE
• Wordle #1324, Sunday 2 February: CHORE
• Wordle #1323, Saturday 1 February: RIVET
• Wordle #1322, Friday 31 January: TOAST
• Wordle #1321, Thursday 30 January: FALSE
• Wordle #1320, Wednesday 29 January: UDDER
• Wordle #1319, Tuesday 28 January: FEVER
• Wordle #1318, Monday 27 January: SHUNT
• Wordle #1317, Sunday 26 January: SUNNY
• Wordle #1316, Saturday 25 January: CRISP
• Wordle #1315, Friday 24 January: CREPE
• Wordle #1314, Thursday 23 January: UPPER
• Wordle #1313, Wedneday 22 January: REACH
• Wordle #1312, Tuesday 21 January: ICING
• Wordle #1311, Monday 20 January: SQUID
• Wordle #1310, Sunday 19 January: ROWER
• Wordle #1309, Saturday 18 January: SILLY
• Wordle #1308, Friday 17 January: PROSE
• Wordle #1307, Thursday 16 January: FLINT
• Wordle #1306, Wednesday 15 January: KNACK
• Wordle #1305, Tuesday 14 January: FANCY
• Wordle #1304, Monday 13 January: CLOAK
• Wordle #1303, Sunday 12 January: TOTAL
• Wordle #1302, Saturday 11 January: DINGY
• Wordle #1301, Friday 10 January: CRAWL
• Wordle #1300, Thursday 9 January: WAFER
• Wordle #1299, Wednesday 8 January: DRAFT
• Wordle #1298, Tuesday 7 January: ATLAS
• Wordle #1297, Monday 6 January: SPRIG
• Wordle #1296, Sunday 5 January: CYBER
• Wordle #1295, Saturday 4 January: RELAX
• Wordle #1294, Friday 3 January: CHEAP
• Wordle #1293, Thursday 2 January: CHOSE
• Wordle #1292, Wednesday 1 January: NERVE
• Wordle #1291, Tuesday 31 December: LEMUR
• Wordle #1290, Monday 30 December: STARE
• Wordle #1289, Sunday 29 December: MAMBO
• Wordle #1288, Saturday 28 December: DECRY
• Wordle #1287, Friday 27 December: GRAIN
• Wordle #1286, Thursday 26 December: AFFIX
• Wordle #1285, Wednesday 25 December: SHARE
• Wordle #1284, Tuesday 24 December: EAGLE
• Wordle #1283, Monday 23 December: SAUNA
• Wordle #1282, Sunday 22 December: BRAWN
• Wordle #1281, Saturday 21 December: BLADE
• Wordle #1280, Friday 20 December: FLASH
• Wordle #1279, Thursday 19 December: STRAY
• Wordle #1278, Wednesday 18 December: HEFTY
• Wordle #1277, Tuesday 17 December: SCOWL
• Wordle #1276, Monday 16 December: BOAST

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.