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 Colin Laurel. You can read more about him here.
★★★
Wordle 685 3/6
⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜ SPLAT
⬜🟨🟩⬜⬜ MOLDY
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 BELOW
Today, I started with SPLAT, a fun word that felt like it had Andrew Keh’s “Wordle je ne sais quoi.” Its “Wheel of Fortune” consonants reminded me of Wordle solutions I’ve used in the past, and the onomatopoeia was enticing.
I played it and … no dice, except that center letter, which might end up helping me out a lot. There are many directions I could have gone with that pattern. I couldn’t imagine the winning word not having a double letter. Maybe something with a double L could be the answer? It was hard not to think of all the plurals that could work here, especially with an S tacked on at the end of a verb, as in CULLS, MULLS or HULLS, but I remembered that plural words are almost never the solution in Wordle.
I could have guessed a word ending in S as a last-ditch effort to see what letters were included, but I was playing to find a possible solution as quickly as possible. I remembered my repeated-letter hunch and thought of using LOLLY or FOLLY. Instead, I played MOLDY: a fresh guess full of letters I hadn’t used yet, and two vowels that would no doubt be useful for my game.
Yet again, I was faced with mostly gray squares. Where could the O go? I thought there were only two real possibilities: either right before or right after the L. FELON was an option, but it dawned on me that the answer could also be BELOW, which felt like a safer bet.
This Wordle had no repeated letters to speak of, but it challenged me nonetheless. I’m giving it three stars for difficulty level and entertainment value. It stretched my brain and had me searching the far corners of my vocabulary.
Today’s word is BELOW, an adverb. According to Webster’s New World College Dictionary, it means “in or to a lower place; beneath.”
Today’s Statistics
Today’s puzzle is easy.
The letter pattern in today’s word is unique enough that the answer can be found using elimination strategies within six guesses, and the word is very familiar vocabulary with no repeated letters.
Our Featured Artist
Colin Laurel is a Black illustrator with an affinity for bold line work and joyous expression. He uses his identity as a lens through which to provide healing imagery to queer and marginalized communities, and he has referred to his art as a form of self-care. Mr. Laurel is influenced by vintage movie posters, production art, video games, music and mythology. With each piece, he hopes to convey humanity’s relationship with the beauty of nature.
Further Reading
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