Today’s Wordle #556 Hints, Clues And Answer For Tuesday, December 27th

Today is the last Tuesday of 2022. Tomorrow will be the last Wednesday. There will never be another Sunday or Monday of 2022. As the week progresses, the final days of the year will fall off. Soon, we will all need to remember to write ‘2023’ on everything. This keeps happening but it always feels a little strange.

The year is, in some ways, an abstraction. Once upon a time there were 10 months in a year. Then Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar came along and each got their very own months wedged between the rest. The Julian calendar was in place for nearly 2,000 years (and still is in some cultures). Julius Caesar first ordered that the calendar that bears his name be adopted way back in 45 B.C. The new calendar consisted of three years with 365 days followed by one with 366 days—a leap year. But this formula was not quite right.

During the Middle Ages, people began to realize that the Julian leap year had leaped too far, adding one extra day every 128 years since its inception. Because of this, by the late 16th century, the actual equinoxes were taking place ten days too early. So in 1852, Pope Gregory XIII authorized the Gregorian calendar, which many Roman Catholic countries adopted. It dropped 10 days from the month of October that year and revised how leap years worked by making end-of-century leap years only occur if the year is divisible by 400 (so the year 1600, the year 2000, the year 2400 etc. would all be leap years while every other end-of-century year, such as 1900 or 2100, would not).

England—a protestant nation—didn’t adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1752 when it became obvious that something had to give. This was an awkward transition in part because in the old system, March 25th was the start of a new year. To make the change, March 24th, 1750 was followed by March 25th, 1751. Then December 31st, 1751 was followed by January 1st, 1752 (making 1751 a very short year!). In 1752, September 2nd came just before September 14th, slashing 11 days from the month in order to sync with the Gregorian calendar and line up the proper solstices and equinoxes.

And that’s your history lesson for the day! Let’s Wordle!

Today’s Wordle Solution (with spoilers)

The Hint: In the language of the Romans, something like together-dominion, but shortened.

The Clue: There’s a double vowel in this word.

The Answer:

I gave a hard hint because I was feeling a bit grouchy over having to take 5 guesses to get this one. Well, no, I wasn’t actually feeling grouchy I just wasn’t sure how to give a hint for this word without giving it away entirely.

My opening guess, tribe, was super bad, leaving me with a whopping 440 remaining words to pick from. Cloak narrowed that down to just 5, but at this point it became a guessing game and there wasn’t much I could do.

Cough got me the C and O in green and eliminated even more letters. Comfy was a fine guess but missed the mark. But all I had left—that I could think of at least—was condo and I guessed tat for the win! Huzzah!