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Megan Cartwright is Newsweek’s Deputy Entertainment Editor, based in London, U.K. Her focus is on U.S. pop culture and entertainment news stories. Megan joined Newsweek in 2022 from New York where she was the Senior Editor for In Touch, Life & Style and Closer magazines and had previously interned at MTV, Cosmopolitan and InStyle. She is a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University. Languages: English.
You can get in touch with Megan by emailing m.cartwright@newsweek.com.
Megan Cartwright
Deputy Entertainment Editor
If you’re finding today’s Wordle particularly tricky, Newsweek has some hints that will help you work out the answer.
Josh Wardle invented the game during the COVID-19 pandemic and released it to the public in October 2021. By January 2022, The New York Times had purchased it for a fee that’s never been made public.
Now, it’s the newspaper’s most popular word game with many celebrity fans including Carol Burnett, Allison Janney and Ben Affleck.
Erhan Aslan, who teaches linguistics at the University of Reading in England, previously spoke with Newsweek about why the game stands out among other online brainteasers.
“Word-based puzzles and games have been around for quite a while, and they are nothing new. What is different or new today is how and where people play games. Before the digital age, word puzzle games, particularly crossword puzzles, would usually appear in newspapers and magazines. People would do them while waiting for the bus or train, in the toilet, or just to kill time,” the associate professor said.
“In today’s digital age, like many other things, many simple games like Wordle can be played online. I think that Wordle gains its popularity not only from its simple rules but also from its virality on social media platforms as a result of people sharing/posting their scores to demonstrate a sense of accomplishment and validation.”
How To Play ‘Wordle’
The trick to conquering the game is to guess the daily five-letter word in six attempts before the answer will be revealed on your screen.
Along the way, a color-coded guide will help you to narrow down what the term could be. If a correct letter is in the correct place, the tile will turn green; if it is in the wrong place, it will turn yellow; and if it is not in the word at all, the tile turns gray.
Wardle shared his best tip to playing the puzzle in an interview with Newsweek in 2022.
“I would encourage people to experiment with different ideas and to find their own [starting] words, rather than just sticking to the same proven tactics over and over again,” he told readers at the time.
Newsweek‘s clues for today’s Wordle are:
Hint #1: The answer starts with the letter “L.”
Hint #2: It can be a noun or a verb.