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Wordle answer (Friday 21 October 2022): Wordle word of the day #489 and hintsHints and the answer to today’s Wordle word

Hints and the answer to today’s Wordle word

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun

A close-up of part of a Wordle grid. The letters spell “what is the answer”.

Looking for the Wordle answer for Friday 21 October 2022?Goodness, it’s time forWordle#489. We’re nearing the big #500, aren’t we? That’s a whole lot of Wordles, and a testament both to the size and flexibility of the English language, and to the genius of Josh Wardle’s little daily word guessing game.

If you want to get through Friday with your Wordle winning streak intact, then allow our guide to nudge you in the right direction. Below the video you’ll find today’s Wordle answer, along with a definition. If that’s a bit too much of a giveaway, then first you can check out our handy Wordle hints to see if you can figure out the answer before it’s revealed to you in all its glory.

Wrong day? Check out theWordle hint and answer for Thursday 26th Decemberinstead!

Wordle October 21 hints

We all need a helping hand every now and then, particularly when it comes to Wordle. If you’re struggling to find the Wordle answer today, have a look at these three hints and see if they can help you find the solution:

Eight Great Wordle-likesLooking for an alternative to Wordle? Here are eight of our favourite Wordle-likes to add to your morning puzzle routine.Watch on YouTube

Eight Great Wordle-likes

Cover image for YouTube video

Wordle answer today October 21

It’s time to reveal the answer to today’s Wordle. The word is…

GROVE.

A grove is a small group of trees - basically a tiny patch of forest. It has very positive connotations, kind of like an oasis. Visiting a grove is a very good way to feel excluded from the daily hustle and bustle of urban life. But you couldn’t possibly stay there. Or else you won’t be able to keep playing Wordle every day, now, would you?

As always, we encourage you not to spoil today’s Wordle answer online, or to send it round to friends and family members until they’ve already played the game for themselves. It’s nice to let people figure things out on their lonesome.

How to play Wordle

Wordle is a very straightforward word guessing game. The aim is to guess the correct five-letter word in just six guesses. With each guess, the individual letters of your chosen word will highlight green if they’re in the correct place, or yellow if they’re in the wrong place. If a letter doesn’t appear in the solution word at all, it’ll remain unhighlighted.

How did Wordle begin?

Are any Wordle words not allowed?

You can type in pretty much any five-letter word in the English language and Wordle will accept it as a guess. However, the answer is picked each day from a much smaller list of more common five-letter words. There are still thousands of possible answers, of course, but it means the answer will never be a word as obscure as, say, “THIOL”, or “CAIRD”, or “MALIC” (yes, those are all real words).

There are very occasional words which the New York Times will choose not to publish as the day’s Wordle answer, perhaps for reasons relating to recent news or politics. For example, shortly after news broke that Roe v Wade might be overturned in the United States, the NYT decided to change the March 30th word from “FETUS” to “SHINE”, as the feeling was that the word “fetus” was too politically charged a word in the context of recent events.

The New York Times has also been careful never to allow what they consider to be rude words as the answer to a Wordle puzzle. But of course there’s nothing stopping you from using even the dirtiest of words as guesses, as long as they’re accepted words in the dictionary, and as long as you realise that they’ll never end up being the answer.

Is Wordle getting too easy for you?

If after all that Wordle is still too easy for you, then you could always try one of the many other Wordle-inspired games online that have cropped up over the past year. One of our favourites isWorldle, in which you must guess a country of the world based on its shape. There’s alsoWaffle, which is about swapping letters in a completed grid to complete all the words;Moviedle, which shows you an entire movie in a tiny space of time and challenges you to guess the movie within six guesses; andQuordle, which tasks you with solving four Wordles at once with the same guesses.

If you need some help with future Wordles, be sure to check out our list of thebest Wordle starting wordsfor the greatest chance of success. You can also check out our archive ofpast Wordle answersto see which words have been chosen previously.

Use ourWordle Solver toolto help you figure out the answer to any Wordle in moments! Just pop your current guesses in the grid and watch the tool instantly give you all the potential answers.