Saturday, April 23rd Solution And Hint

Saturday is here at last and a glorious weekend lays spread out before us. Just a few minutes of that weekend will be occupied with everyone’s favorite word puzzle game—Wordle, the once-a-day puzzler that has captured the hearts and souls of people all over the world, inspiring countless knock-offs, spin-offs and imitators in the process.

The key to Wordle’s success is its universality. Everyone plays the exact same game with the exact same word every day. You can share your success stories (or failures) without spoiling that word. And you aren’t hassled with micro-transactions or ads (except for a small one once you complete the word that recommends you try out the New York Times’s other word puzzler, Spelling Bee).

That’s actually a super fun, super challenging game that everyone who enjoys Wordle should take for a spin, though it requires a New York Times membership to play. Thankfully, Wordle does not.

In any case, let’s take a look at today’s word shall we?

Today’s Wordle #308 Answer & Hint

Spoilers ahead! You’ve been warned!

But first, a hint:

Popeye’s paramour.

And the answer is . . . .

Olive!

Now, I must confess that as I have begun using Wordle Bot to analyze my guesses every day, I sometimes get a little . . . irritated.

For instance, I think these were all pretty good guesses, and Wordle Bot agrees up to a point. My first guess is a ‘great opening word’ that narrows the possible solutions down to 95, Wordle Bot informs me.

My second guess, close, is ‘Nice.’ Wordle Bot writes: “Before your guess, there were 16 possible solutions, but now there is only one. You should solve the puzzle on your next turn.”

I’m doubly confused by this. First, I thought plane narrowed down my possible solutions to 95, not 16. Second, close may narrow the possible solutions down to one from the answer list, but there are obviously other words not on the answer list that work. I have no idea if my word is on the answer list or not. When I guessed oldie I didn’t know it wasn’t a possible solution! Wordle Bot treats this guess as a ‘0’—a total failure of a guess—simply because, unbeknownst to your humble narrator, this wasn’t on a list of possible answers. As far as I’m concerned, oldie and olive are both perfectly good words and either guess makes equal sense.

‘OLDIE is a valid guess, but it’s not one of the 2,309 Wordle solutions—sorry, I don’t make the rules,’ writes Wordle Bot. Yeah well I don’t guess based on the 2,309 possible solutions, either, because I don’t know what they all are and I’m not going to cross-reference against that list before making my guesses.

Oh well, I got it on guess #4 and that works for me. Happy Saturday, weekend Wordlers! See you on Monday!

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