Today’s Wordle #488 Hint, Clues And Answer For Thursday, October 20th

Today is October 20th, 2022 and—for all we know—it may go down in history, for better or worse. I suppose that depends on whether or not anything historical takes place.

Speaking of which, let’s take a walk down memory lane. What notable events happened on this day in history?

• Back in 1935, Mao Zedong and 4,000 of his followers in the Red Army ended what is now known as the Long March, arriving in Shensi Province in northwest China after fleeing the Nationalist forces 368 days—and 6,000 miles—earlier. The force had dwindled from over 86,000 by the time Mao reached the Great Wall of China and the Provincial Soviet of Northenr Shensi. It was the longest continuous march in the history of warfare. The Communists would win the war against the Nationalists 14 years later.
• In 1947 the Red Scare was driven to new heights when the first Congressional committee began investigating Communist influence in Hollywood. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began questioning witnesses with the now infamous question “Are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” Some members of the industry, including Gary Cooper and Walt Disney, gave the committee names of suspected communists in Hollywood. Only a small group—known as the Hollywood Ten—at first resisted, all of whom ended up in jail. A blacklist soon followed, with over 300 screenwriters, actors, directors and other members of the industry—including Arthur Miller and Orson Welles—banned from working in Hollywood.
• In 2011, Muammar al-Qaddafi—the Libyan dictator who had served longer than any other leader in Africa and the Arab states—was killed by rebel forces near his birthplace, the town of Sirte. He had taken power in a bloodless coup in 1969 when he overthrew King Idris and started a revolutionary government based on his quasi-Socialist Islamic philosophy, all of which he put down in his Green Book.

Alright, now that our mind has been sharpened a bit by history, let’s do this Wordle!

Today’s Wordle Solution (Spoilers!)

Hint: Indigo-dyed, durable cotton material popularized during the Gold Rush of 1853.

The Clue: This word’s two vowels are not back-to-back.

The Answer:

I feel pretty good about this one!

I was initially thinking of the word crown for my opening guess but decided I wanted more than one vowel. Crone popped into my brain for obvious reasons and I went with it. I’d say it was a pretty decent opener—neither great nor terrible—leaving me with 133 remaining choices.

My second guess slashed that number down to just one, though I didn’t realize this at the time. I was trying to think of words with ‘A’ and ‘U’ at first but then thought better of it and went with one that would get me an ‘A’ and an ‘I’. Stain didn’t seem like such a great guess at the time, but it gave me all the information I needed.

Rather quickly I came up with denim. Here’s why: I was thinking of the maxim ‘I before E except after C’ and since I knew that the ‘E’ couldn’t come after the ‘I’ in this word—and since I knew there was also not a ‘C’ in this word—I reasoned that the ‘E’ would likely be in the second box, separated from the ‘I’ by a consonant.

I toyed with the ‘N’ being in Box #1 but quickly discarded the idea and popped it into the only other box remaining: Box #3. Now I could sound out ‘ENI’ and that’s all it took. I immediately thought denim and typed it in for the win.

Huzzah!