Today’s ‘Wordle’ Answer #240: Monday, February 14th Solution

Well, it’s Valentine’s Day and Wordle isn’t pulling any punches.

The word puzzle viral sensation has the perfect word for those of us who find ourselves feeling more than a little jaded by all things love and romance.

It’s kind of the perfect storm. Valentine’s Day, Monday and the disappointing Bengals defeat during Sunday’s Super Bowl (sorry, Madden NFL 22 prediction). But today’s word of the day made me chuckle—after very nearly stumping me entirely. This one is tough!

An Introduction To Wordle

That should get you started with the game if you haven’t played yet. If you’re here for hints and the solution to today’s Wordle, read on!

Today’s Wordle Word Of The Day Answer #240

Spoiler warning! Today’s Wordle solution is ahead. If you don’t want to see the answer or even the hint, turn back now!

Okay, now for the hint: It’s Greek to me.

And the answer is . . .

This one was tough! I was feeling pretty concerned by the fourth guess, with just three letters—all still in the wrong spot—and just an ‘I’ and a ‘Y’ as vowels (basically 1 and a half vowels!)

I guessed SUPER because of the Super Bowl, though I was originally going to go with CLEAN. Clean would have been a better starting word since it would have given me the ‘C’ in the right spot and an ‘N’ in the wrong spot.

Instead, I got the ‘N’ with FOUND. My next two guesses got me the ‘I’ and ‘Y’ but left me with very few ideas on where to go next. The challenge here also ended up being the saving grace.

Since ‘I’ couldn’t be in the second or third spots, that left me with far fewer possible guesses. Most five-letter words I could think of had the ‘I’ in those spots and had the ‘Y’ at the end (BINGY, KINKY, etc).

This meant the word had to start with an I or have the second to last letter be an ‘I’—I’m pretty sure there aren’t many words that end with an ‘I’. From here, it’s just a matter of brainstorming. Nothing that started with ‘I’ came to mind, so I had to think of something with the ‘I’ all the way back in the fourth box, meaning a ‘Y’ almost certainly had to come sooner. The only word I could think of was ‘CYNIC’ and sure enough, that was the word of the day.

This is a tough word for lots of reasons. Two of the same letter in the first and last spot? Yikes! The ‘Y’ in there as stand-in for an ‘I’ essentially. Not exactly a word you hear every day, even though it’s one most people recognize. We think of cynics as pretty much interchangeable with skeptics, but of course cynicism is an ancient school of Greek philosophy. I’ll leave the etymology to my dad, however. I’ll update with his notes later.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope your Valentine’s Day is a heck of a lot better than mine!

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