Hints, Clues And Answer For Thursday September 17

Today’s Wordle Hints & Clues

Okay, now that the bonus custom Wordle is out of the way, let’s move on to the official real deal Wordle!

• Wordle Bot’s Starting Word: SLATE
• My Starting Word Today: TRAIL (22 words left)
• The Hint: It’s Greek to me.
• The Clue: This Wordle ends with a vowel.

Hints not enough, or curious to see if you did better than me on today’s Wordle? You can find the answer and read my Wordle Bot analysis and check out the current Competitive Wordle score between me, your humble Wordle guide, and the Wordle Bot below!

Today’s Wordle Answer

Today’s Wordle Etymology

“Theta” comes from Greek thêta (θῆτα), the eighth letter of the Greek alphabet. Its name ultimately derives from the Phoenician letter ṭēth. Greek theta is the ancestor of the th sound represented by θ in Ancient Greek transliteration.

Today’s Wordle Bot Analysis

Every day I check Wordle Bot to help analyze my guessing game. You can check your Wordle score with Wordle Bot right here.

Rotten luck today. My opening guess, TRAIL left me with just 22 words but I somehow could not narrow it down. I tried eliminating a bunch of common letters with BONGS but that still left me with 9 and no new boxes. TAUPE slashed the remaining possible solutions down to two but I just came out with the one: TWEAK. THETA never even crossed my mind . . . until I thought for ages and finally came up with it. Hardly seems fair to use Greek letters, though I suppose it’s easy for frat and sorority alums.

Competitive Wordle Score

The Bot is clearly a fratboy because he got this in three somehow. I’d been slowly making gains this month, but those have just been destroyed. I get -1 for guessing in five and -1 for losing to the Bot. The bot gets 1 for guessing in three and 1 for beating me. Our new September totals are:

Erik: 5 points

Wordle Bot: 12 points

Today’s Bonus Custom Wordle

Now that we can create our own custom Wordles, I’m including a bonus Wordle with each daily Wordle guide. These can be 4 to 7 letters long. Hopefully this is a vfun extra challenge. Click the link below to play the Wordle I hand-crafted for you today.

Today’s Bonus Custom Wordle is 7 letters long.

• The hint: Big cat. Friend of small child.
• The clue: This Wordle begins and ends with consonants.
• Yesterday’s Custom Wordle Answer: INSANE

How To Play Competitive Wordle

• Guessing in 1 is worth 3 points; guessing in 2 is worth 2 points; guessing in 3 is worth 1 point; guessing in 4 is worth 0 points; guessing in 5 is -1 points; guessing in 6 is -2 points and missing the Wordle is -3 points.
• If you beat your opponent you get 1 point. If you tie, you get 0 points. And if you lose to your opponent, you get -1 point. Add it up to get your score. Keep a daily running score or just play for a new score each day.
• Fridays are 2XP, meaning you double your points—positive or negative.
• You can keep a running tally or just play day-by-day. Enjoy!

New Bonus Weekly NYT Games Update

The New York Times launched a new weekly suit of bonus puzzle games for subscribers this week, and the first batch has freebies for non-subscribers also. You can read all about the new twists on the beloved games here, and watch my interview with NYT Games chief, Jonathan Knight below:

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