Today’s ‘Wordle’ Answer #272: Friday, March 18th Solution

Well it’s Friday! TGIF!

Friday stems from the Old English word frīġedæġ, which means the ‘day of Frigg’. The modern Scandinavian word for Friday is fredag, which means Freya’s day. Frigg and Freya are essentially the same goddess, wife of Odin.

This is interesting, because in the Roman tradition this day was devoted to Venus, wife of Jupiter. The linguistic marriage of Frigg/Freya to the Roman (and hence, Catholic/Christian) tradition makes a lot of sense. In Latin languages, Friday is all about Venus—hence Viernes in Spanish, Verendi in Italian or divendres in Catalan.

The connections keep coming. In most Indian languages Friday is Shukravāra, named after Shukra, which—in Hindu astrology—is the planet Venus. Like the goddess Venus, Shukra represents women, beauty and sexual relations.

All of which is to say that even though our many languages may represent obstacles in how we are able to communicate with one another, they also show us just how weirdly connected and similar we all actually are. Our history and geography and language unite us as one global people, even though it may not seem that way.

But you’re not here for my random musings (well, maybe a few of you) you’re here for today’s Wordle. Let’s get to it!

Today’s Wordle #272 Answer

Before we leap into the abyss (that would be a hell of a Wordle word, no?) I must warn you: Spoilers approach. Be wary. Be watchful. Be bloody, bold and resolute.

First, a hint: If you were to cook using the name of this day of the week, quickly in a pan, you’d be doing this.

And the answer is . . . (drumroll) . . . .

Sauté!

This is a tough one. I think it’s the first that uses a word with an ‘accent’ over a letter, in this case the ‘é’ or e-acute. Of course, the accent doesn’t pop up in the word—can you imagine if you had to specifically guess that?—which is confusing and I suspect will be tricky for a lot of people.

Even for me, actually, mostly because when I think of the word Sauté I think of the accent over the ‘e’ and without it there, it took me a while to make my brain pronounce it that way instead of how you pronounce haute. Of course there really aren’t any other options (except, arguably, vaute) so once I had ‘aute’ in haute I basically had to come to Sauté sooner or later.

My first guess, trade, wasn’t so bad, either. With two yellows and a green, I was 99% sure that it would end in ‘te’ and just had to think for a bit before I came up with acute. The trick here was I kept wanting to guess words with the ‘a’ in the middle position. After a while I realized that it was probably a different vowel there, which meant the ‘a’ had to start the word out. Hence acute, which luckily got me the ‘u’ in the right spot. When that turned out to be wrong, and the ‘a’ had to be the second letter, well, the rest is history.

Sauté is one of those French words we’ve adopted because it tells us specifically something about preparing food and sounds fancy. Sautéing something is to fry it quickly in a pan. Sauté some onions and mushrooms to put in an omelet or on your cheeseburger. Delicious!

Anyways, my hint was obviously a reference to frying since it’s Friday and isn’t language fun?

Happy weekend, Wordlers!

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