Welcome to The Wordle Review. Be warned: This article contains spoilers for today’s puzzle. Solve Wordle first, or scroll at your own risk.
This month’s featured artist is Simone Noronha. You can read more about them here.
★★★
Wordle 676 2/6
🟩🟨⬜🟨⬜ MODEL
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 METRO
Many Wordlers start their day with the game, but it ends mine. Up at 11:30 p.m.? Hold out 30 more minutes and a fresh grid will be yours! I’ve been trying to break this habit, but the pull of the midnight release is strong.
MODEL is my starting word tonight, because I’m watching the movie “Triangle of Sadness” and it’s about models. My usual method of choosing an initial guess is whimsical: I cast about for a word that’s relevant to my day or connects to a subject on my mind. This may not be the soundest strategy, but it makes Wordle more fun — it feels new and different each day.
I have a couple of rules. No repeated letters in the first guess, because that would waste an opportunity. And no plural nouns in any guess, because, while permitted as guesses, they never seem to be the answer.
I feel hopeful about MODEL because it contains two vowels and common consonants. I hit enter: The starting letter is correct! What luck. And O and E are yellow. Maybe I can guess this in two!
I fill in MXOXE, with the X’s as stand-ins. But it seems the wrong approach. M does not form consonant clusters, and using other vowels leads to nothing: MIOXE, MAOXE.
I try reversing MODEL’s vowels, MEXOX, and then picture each available letter in the middle position. Nothing looks right.
How about MEOWS? That would be cute, but it’s a plural noun. MEOWS is also a conjugated verb, though. Does that change the calculation? I want to try it, but I’m nervous.
I ponder a word ending in O. The most likely place for an E in the template seems to be the second position: MEXXO. Hmm, METRO? Let’s try it.
Nailed it! As a Wordle player, I’m thrilled. But as a language lover and a New Yorker, I am skeptical.
First of all, “metro” is just a shortened version of the adjective “metropolitan.” Yes, it’s also a noun referring to transit systems, but only some transit systems. New Yorkers call our subway the subway. More familiar here is the full “metropolitan,” in all its Latinate glory: It graces institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Opera, and it gave the Mets their name. But we do use MetroCards and the Metro-North Railroad, so I can’t entirely turn my back on the word.
When I look up its origin, I see that “metro” began as “métro,” referring to the “métropolitain” Paris underground in 1904. Recalling an Art Nouveau subway sign that stopped me dead in my tracks in Paris, I end on a happy note.
Final review: 3 out of 5 stars.
Today’s word is METRO. According to Webster’s New World College Dictionary, it’s a noun meaning “a subway.”
Today’s Statistics
This word is moderately challenging because of uncertainty, but a strategy can help.
The word contains a common letter pattern with five or six possible answers. Getting the answer in six guesses requires strategic choices at every guess.
Our Featured Artist
Simone Noronha is a South Asian illustrator and art director from Dubai who is based in New York. She enjoys weaving narratives and intricate details into her imagery with saturated palettes and the moody lighting that has become her signature. In an interview with Wired, she said, “I like to think of illustrative style as just our natural flaws shining through and doing the best with it.”
Further Reading
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