Today’s Wordle Review

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 her here.

★★★★★

Wordle 680 4/6

⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜ HEART
🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜ PLANK
🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜ PLAID
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 PLAZA

This is my first Wordle Review that doesn’t describe a solve in three tries. Not my best! But as one commenter mentioned, I experienced a lucky “quantum leap” from one turn to the next last week. I guess this was my KARMA (⬜🟨⬜⬜🟩).

People who know I work at The Times like to offer up comments, often unsolicited, on their Wordle strategy. A few days ago, a friend told me she always starts with HEART. I chose to follow in her footsteps today and it proved a satisfactory starting guess. Guessing that H helped me out a lot, barring me from erroneously using words with SH, CH or PH letter combinations in subsequent turns.

I decided to go with PLANK to knock out some more consonants, and received a bunch of green squares for my trouble. This can sometimes be unnerving, because even though you know you got everything right, you have no clues as to which other letters belong in the remaining spots. I wondered if the winning word included an I, and where it would go if it did. I tried PLAID, and watched Wordle glory slip out of my hands as soon as I hit “enter.”

In my effort to wrap this one up in four turns, I stared at the board for so long that guesses started to take shape in my peripheral vision. I knew a plural word like PLAYS would not be allowed. PLAGE was the only word I could think of that isn’t plural, but it has an E. I was stuck in that part of the Wordle game where I knew I would face-palm when I solved it, but I was mystified. I visualized and punched in different letter combinations until the answer came to me, involving that repeated A. I had been so focused on sneaking in another vowel that the answer almost passed me by.

My solving experience was tricky and rewarding today. The word is common but not top-of-mind enough to be too easy, so I’m awarding this Wordle five stars. I should have started by guessing PZAZZ (🟩🟨🟩🟨🟨).

Today’s word is PLAZA. According to Webster’s New World College Dictionary, it’s a public marketplace or town square.

Today’s Statistics

Today’s word is challenging because of its unfamiliar letter pattern.

The word doesn’t emerge as a solution because of repeated and unusual letters.

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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