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Wordle answer (Wednesday 4 January 2023): Wordle word of the day #564 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
Looking for the Wordle answer for Wednesday 4 January 2023?The first Wednesday of January is perhaps one of the cruellest days of the year. With the holidays already seeming long behind us and a great big stretch of time ahead before we can really consider taking another break, it’s important to find the little joys where we can at this time of year. And what’s littler or more joyful thanWordle?
Looking for today’s solution? Check out theWordle hint and answer for Thursday 26th December!
Wordle January 4 hints
After some help with the Wordle answer today? Here are some hints to get you started:
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
Wordle answer today January 4
It’s time to reveal the answer to today’s Wordle. The word is…
LAYER.
As I’ve just discovered, “layer” is surprisingly hard to define for such a common word. It’s perhaps easier to approach it from the point of view of its use as a verb, where it means to arrange multiple layers of a material or substance. But that definition, of course, contains the noun “layer”, which is quite tricky, since it can refer to just about anything that’s being laid down several times in repetition. My mind immediately went to layer cakes and lasagna, maybe because it’s nearly lunchtime, but of course layering techniques are used in any number of other pursuits, such as making clothing or editing digital images.
I’ll leave you to ponder on the strangeness of a word with a definition that is both completely self-explanatory and yet almost impossible to express succinctly. Just please remember not to spoil the answer for other players while you’re thinking about it!
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.
