Today’s Wordle #486 Word Of The Day Hint, Clues And Answer For Tuesday, October 18th

The days are getting shorter and colder as Autumn deepens, settling into yellow and orange and brown, leaves piling up on the wet ground. Here, it’s been grey and rainy, which has made the season all the richer. It’s a bit distracting, however. It’s hard to focus when all you really want to do is curl up by a fire with a good book and a mug of spicy tea.

Or nap. I’ve been sick for a week now and I’ve pushed through the best I can, but mostly I just want to lay in bed these days under my blankets and hibernate. I know it’s too early for hibernating. Winter is coming and then—were we so lucky as to be grizzly bears—we could clamber down into our caves and sleep the next few months away. Stir with the springtime.

Of course, if we hibernated through the winter months we’d miss nearly 100 Wordles—possibly more for the heavier sleepers among us. I doubt The New York Times would put them on hold for the winter. After all, the cold winter months are perfect for word puzzles. You’re stuck indoors. You might as well keep your wits sharp!

Speaking of which . . . .

Today’s Wordle Solution (Spoilers!)

The Hint: I think therefor I am.

The Clue: There’s only one vowel today.

The Answer:

As Wordle Bot tells me, my opening guess today was “extraordinarily lucky” leaving me with just six remaining options to choose from. I suppose I owe Wordle Bot a debt on this one, since it’s often suggested hoist as a second or third guess. It’s a good one to eliminate a lot of very common letters. You get two vowels and three common consonants. I just wasn’t expecting to get three green boxes on my first guess—that’s damn lucky, alright.

Of course, I knew there were probably lots of ist words to choose from so I figured my second guess should eliminate a few more letters just to be safe. Thankfully, weary got me a yellow ‘E’ and I knew the only other spot it could go was the first box. This left me with only one possible choice and I knew it right away: Exist.

And that was that—nice and quick. Honestly, this is probably a pretty tricky word if you don’t get a super lucky opening guess. Slate will get you three yellow letters but you still have to figure out where they go and then the ‘X’ mucks things up. Best of luck!