Today’s ‘Wordle’ Answer #257: Thursday, March 3rd Solution

Another day, another Wordle, another Wordle guide/column from your humble narrator.

It’s March 3rd and a Thursday, the day we set aside in honor of the friendly Norse god (and Fortnite-playing Marvel superhero) Thor. Thor’s day. Yesterday was Odin’s day—Wōden’s day—because the history of words is fascinating and bizarre and often linked to who conquered who and the luck of good timing.

Curiously, each day of the week except Saturday has its origin in the names of Norse gods and mythology.

In any case, March is here and Winter is in its final act, with less than three weeks before the Spring Solstice. Yesterday marked the beginning of Lent (Ash Wednesday) which continues until Maudy Thursday on April 14th, just before the Easter weekend. It is a somber time of year, which seems fitting.

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for warm weather, late sunsets and barbeques.

In any case, today’s Wordle is one of my favorites so far. A great word on its own merits, though not the trickiest we’ve seen.

Wordle, of course, remains a wildly popular little puzzle game, though it seems the Russian invasion of Ukraine has sucked the oxygen from the proverbial room, drawing everyone’s attention away from the good and decent things in the world—like word puzzles and Elden Ring—to the devastating and tragic, as all war invariably is and must be.

An Introduction to Wordle

• For those new to the game, read our Wordle primer before you start playing and learn about how this fad got started.
• Then, if you want some advanced tactics to get those low guess answers, you can read our Wordle Tips and Tricks guide here.

Today’s Wordle Answer #257

Naturally, prior to getting to the answer or the hint, I must warn you, dearest readers, that spoilers lay in wait ahead. First . . . .

The Hint: The Smashing Pumpkins’ third studio album.

I started with TRIAD which felt like a pretty good word filled with lots of common letters, but it only got me an ‘R’ and not even in the right spot.

From here, I guessed RUNES because I’ve been playing many, many hours of the wonderful new video game Elden Ring and can’t really stop thinking about it day or night (you can read my latest piece on the magnificent game right here). Runes are central to the game’s mythology and many of its mechanics.

Anyways, this was a much better guess, giving me ‘U’ and ‘N’ though, once again, not in the right spot. ‘R’ in the first box stayed yellow as well.

CHURN was the best guess so far, giving me URN in all the right places, though ‘CH’ was all wrong.

I admit to being somewhat baffled at this point. I went over the remaining letters a number of times and just couldn’t think which ones could open this word. So I picked five letters that I hadn’t guessed yet just to see if any stuck. BLOWY got me an ‘O’ and eliminated several others, and that’s when it hit me: MOURN.

In fact, there’s a Castle Morne in Elden Ring, and in its depths a sword that appears to be an Easter Egg referencing George R.R. Martin’s A Song Of Fire And Ice books upon which HBO’s Game Of Thrones was based. Martin, after all, helped pen the game’s lore and backstory.

In any case, mourn is a beautiful word with roots in Old English (murnan) and Old High German (mornen) as well as Old Norse (morna). Each of these deals with remembering sorrowfully, or pining, or some sense of grieving and loss and memory. To be in mourning is much different than simply to be sad or depressed or bummed out. To mourn is to plumb the very depths of sadness, to deal with the implacable reality of things lost, never to return. Lost loved ones or lost love.

And on that bright and shiny note, have a wonderful Thursday and pray for peace. I’ll be riding my Spectral Steed through the Lands Between, slaying monsters and fell beasts.

You can follow me on Twitter and Facebook and support my work on Patreon. If you want, you can also sign up for my diabolical newsletter on Substack and subscribe to my YouTube channel.