It might comes as a surprise to many Wordle players that the most popular starting words used do not always equal success in the game.
The New York Times bought the daily game in 2022, and in December last year, two of its staff crunched some playing data with interesting results.
Josh Katz and Aatish Bhatia analyzed 515 million Wordle games and found that one of the most popular first-word choices was “Adieu.” However, although it was in the top 30 most-used starting words, it was actually not that helpful in the long-run when it came solving the daily puzzle.
“The strategy seems to make sense: Figure out the vowels, and the other letters will fall into place,” wrote Katz and Bhatia in the NYT at the time. “Our new analysis, though, shows that starting with ADIEU or AUDIO does actually put human players at a disadvantage.”
Katz and Bhatia continued: “On average, players who started with ADIEU needed about a third of a turn more to solve their Wordles compared with players who started with SLATE, adding up to 132 extra turns over the course of a year.”
The concept of Wordle is simple enough. Players must guess a secret five-letter word within six attempts or less. A color-coded tile system provides feedback to help you along the way.
A green tile indicates the correct letter in the correct position, while a yellow tile signifies the letter is in the word but in the wrong place. A gray tile means the letter is not in the word at all.
If you need some help working out today’s Wordle answer, check out our collection of clues below. But scroll with caution because the answer is revealed at the end of this article.
‘Wordle’ #1,159, Clues for Wednesday, August 21
Hint #1: Today’s Wordle answer is a noun.
Hint #2: There are no repeated letters.
Hint #3: The word contains one vowel.
Hint #4: The answer begins with ‘M’.
Hint #5: Today’s word is related to gardening.
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‘Wordle’ #1,159, Answer for Wednesday, August 21
The answer to today’s Wordle is “mulch.”
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, mulch is “a protective covering (as of sawdust, compost, or paper) spread or left on the ground to reduce evaporation, maintain even soil temperature, prevent erosion, control weeds, enrich the soil, or keep fruit (such as strawberries) clean.”
Congratulations if you got it right, but don’t worry if you didn’t. Wordle updates every day at midnight in your local time zone, at which point the next puzzle becomes available. Newsweek will be back with another round of hints and tips for each new game.
