Today’s Wordle hints – answer, clues and tips for game #786, Monday, August 14
It’s time for your daily round of Wordle hints, expertly crafted to help you keep your streak going even on the toughest of days.
You might think that you don’t need any clues for Wordle today, but remember: failure in this game is only ever six guesses away.
Below, you’ll find a selection of Wordle hints to guide you in the right direction. You don’t have to use them all, but there are five in total should you need them, covering vowels, starting letter, ending letter and more. And if you don’t have time to play at all, you can see the answer, too.
Want more word-based fun? My Quordle today page contains hints and answers for that game, which remains the best of all the main Wordle alternatives.
SPOILER WARNING: Wordle hints and today’s answer are below, so don’t read on if you don’t want to see them.
Wordle hints (game #786) – clue #1 – Vowels
How many vowels does today’s Wordle have?
• Wordle today has 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).
Wordle hints (game #786) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is S.
S is the most common starting letter in the game, featuring in 365 of Wordle’s 2,309 answers. In fact, it’s almost twice as likely to begin an answer as the next most common starting letter, C.
Wordle hints (game #786) – 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 #786) – 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 #786) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #786.
- Today’s Wordle answer is serpentine.
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 #786)
Today’s Wordle answer (game #786) is… SNAKY.
This is a bit of an odd answer, in my opinion. Is SNAKY a regularly used word? SNEAKY, yes. SHAKY, yes. SNAKE, obviously. But SNAKY? I’m not so sure. It’s grammatically correct, of course – there’s no technical reason why it shouldn’t be in here – but I suspect many people wouldn’t think to guess it unless the letters they’d uncovered left it as the only option.
That would appear to be backed up by its average score of 4.1, which is slightly above the norm and which suggests it’s harder than either EMPTY, HELLO, QUICK or WRATH, the previous four games. And that’s despite lacking the complications that some of those games had; the repeated L in HELLO, for instance, or the Q in QUICK.
It’s also quite a high average score considering that some of the best Wordle starting words reduced the options fairly swiftly; SLANT left just nine answers and CRANE 12, for example.
My pick, STARE, was not so helpful – I still had 31 options to whittle down. I didn’t know that at the time, but could see there were a couple of dozen. In fact, it was one of the easier second guesses to compile a list for, because there are not many letters that can go between an S and A. Essentially, there are seven of them: SNA (as in SNACK), SMA (SMACK), SPA (SPASM), SWA (SWAMP), SLA (SLANG), SCA (SCAMP) and SHA (SHALL). Each of them had multiple options, of which I found about 26 or 27. The only outlier was SOAPY.
The challenge, then, was to play a word that included three or four of those seven common letters. My choice was CLINK, which had the C, L and N, plus a K, which featured at the end of quite a few of my words (SNACK, SMACK, SLACK, SHANK, SPANK, SHANK, SHACK and SHAKY).
WordleBot would have gone with a different word, PLINK, but both would have worked equally well – and either made a lot more sense than guessing one of those 31 options and hoping for the best.
CLINK gave me a yellow N and K, and because the K now couldn’t be at the end, it only left me one solution: SHAKY. Except… that couldn’t be right, because it also needed to include an N. So the word must be SNAK- or SKA-N. It didn’t take me long to realize that SNAKY was the only word that fit and I played that next for a 3/6.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s Wordle hints (game #785)
In a different time zone where it’s still Sunday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #785, too.
- Wordle yesterday had a vowel in one place.
- The first letter in yesterday’s Wordle answer was W.
- There were no repeated letters in yesterday’s Wordle.
- The last letter in yesterday’s Wordle was H.
- Yesterday’s Wordle answer is anger.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #785)
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #785) was… WRATH.
WRATH might well describe my emotion on solving today’s puzzle, because this was another frustrating game for me. In fact, it was a fifth 4/6 in a row, following two 5/6s before that – a far cry from the period just before that, when I scored three 2/6s in eight days.
Anyway, WRATH only has an average score of 3.3, according to WordleBot, which is incredibly low. I’m a little surprised by that; WRATH doesn’t strike me as an easy word to guess, although maybe I’m just saying that because I didn’t get a great score.
That said, there is a simple reason why the score is so low – SLATE, arguably the best Wordle starting word, left just one possible solution today. And it wasn’t the only one to narrow things down greatly; CRATE was also at one, as was CARTE, while TRACE left only four.
My pick, STARE, left just 12, which is pretty low in its own right, but it somehow took me another three guesses from there. I don’t feel like I did anything major wrong: GLINT, my second attempt, was a pretty good effort which WordleBot rated at 88/99 and which narrowed down my options to three.
I identified those three – TRACK, TRAMP and WRATH – reasonably quickly, and (I think) sensibly went with one of the TRA– words, TRACK. That was wrong, though, leaving me to play WRATH fourth time out. Hopefully my luck will change soon.
Wordle answers: The past 50
I’ve been playing Wordle every day for more than a year 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 #785, Sunday 13 August: WRATH
- Wordle #784, Saturday 12 August: QUICK
- Wordle #783, Friday 11 August: HELLO
- Wordle #782, Thursday 10 August: EMPTY
- Wordle #781, Wednesday 9 August: LOVER
- Wordle #780, Tuesday 8 August: BULLY
- Wordle #779, Monday 7 August: BROOK
- Wordle #778, Sunday 6 August: POLYP
- Wordle #777, Saturday 5 August: ANODE
- Wordle #776, Friday 4 August: CHART
- Wordle #775, Thursday 3 August: PARTY
- Wordle #774, Wednesday 2 August: BEGET
- Wordle #773, Tuesday 1 August: TENTH
- Wordle #772, Monday 31 July: STYLE
- Wordle #771, Sunday 30 July: BATHE
- Wordle #770, Saturday 29 July: CURLY
- Wordle #769, Friday 28 July: ETHOS
- Wordle #768, Thursday 27 July: DISCO
- Wordle #767, Wednesday 26 July: HEART
- Wordle #766, Tuesday 25 July: WHEEL
- Wordle #765, Monday 24 July: HOBBY
- Wordle #764, Sunday 23 July: WHALE
- Wordle #763, Saturday 22 July: FROZE
- Wordle #762, Friday 21 July: BURLY
- Wordle #761, Thursday 20 July: FLANK
- Wordle #760, Wednesday 19 July: TONIC
- Wordle #759, Tuesday 18 July: FLYER
- Wordle #758, Monday 17 July: DROOP
- Wordle #757, Sunday 16 July: TOPAZ
- Wordle #756, Saturday 15 July: CRONE
- Wordle #755, Friday 14 July: FIEND
- Wordle #754, Thursday 13 July: BARGE
- Wordle #753, Wednesday 12 July: WHIRL
- Wordle #752, Tuesday 11 July: EARTH
- Wordle #751, Monday 10 July: FOLLY
- Wordle #750, Sunday 9 July: ENTER
- Wordle #749, Saturday 8 July: COWER
- Wordle #748, Friday 7 July: DONUT
- Wordle #747, Thursday 6 July: WINDY
- Wordle #746, Wednesday 5 July: VENOM
- Wordle #745, Tuesday 4 July: IRATE
- Wordle #744, Monday 3 July: HOTEL
- Wordle #743, Sunday 2 July: MOSSY
- Wordle #742, Saturday 1 July: BLEEP
- Wordle #741, Friday 30 June: STRAW
- Wordle #740, Thursday 29 June: DINER
- Wordle #739, Wednesday 28 June: TRACT
- Wordle #738, Tuesday 27 June: ABOUT
- Wordle #737, Monday 26 June: GUEST
- Wordle #736, Sunday 25 June: RODEO
- Wordle #735, Saturday 24 June: GRAND
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 2023.
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.
What is Wordle?
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.
What are the Wordle rules?
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.