Today’s Wordle answer is a standard, common word, though the number of possible answers may trip up some players. According to the New York Times’ WordleBot tool, Wordle #564 is solved in an average 4.4 steps in easy mode and 4.1 steps in hard ode.
If today’s Wordle has you scratching your head, we’re here to help. At Tom’s Guide, we’ve honed our strategy after playing every Wordle so far and losing only once, so hopefully our advice will be helpful.
Aside from a list of the best Wordle start words, we have plenty of Wordle tips and tricks to share. We have also analyzed every Wordle answer to look for patterns and have some further advice for you there. And if you’re new to the game you should also take a look at our What is Wordle? guide
Our first tip is that you should use one of the best Wordle start words for every game you play. But if you want some more specific clues to today’s Wordle answer, then here you go:
- It contains two of the five vowels.*
- It has no repeated letters.
- All of the letters are in the top half in frequency of use.
* By vowel, we mean A, E, I, O, U. There are other letters that are sometimes considered to be vowels, depending on how they are used.
Those hints should get you at least some of the way towards finding today’s Wordle answer. If not, then you can read on for a bigger clue; or, if you just want to know the answer, then skip down further for that.
Alright then, here’s the final hint: Today’s Wordle may make you burrow under a covering.
OK, it’s time to scroll down for the answer…
TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER #564, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 4
So, what is today’s Wordle answer for game #564?
Drumroll please — it’s LAYER.
Happy New Year, fellow Wordlers! Kelly here, back from a long and refreshing holiday break. Many thanks to Alan for covering while I was away.
While I wasn’t working, I was still Wordling, of course. I won’t go over each of my games, but suffice it to say I achieved mostly 4/6 and some 3/6 scores.
Today, I notched my most frequent score, 4/6, which is about in line with the Wordlebot average for hard mode. As usual, I began with my favorite among the best Wordle start words, which is RAISE.
It gave me a decent amount of info: a green ‘A,’ yellow ‘E’ and yellow ‘R.’ Not bad. According to Wordlebot, it was middling in terms of luck, leaving behind 46 possible solutions.
You fared better if you started with LEARN (6), LEAST (14) or TRAIL (25), but not so much with TRACE (73), STARE (80), CRANE (89) or SLANT (110).
For my second guess, I wanted to confirm the placement of the ‘E’ and ‘R’ and find more consonants. The most common ones, besides ‘R’ and ‘S,’ are ‘T,’ ‘L,’ ‘N’ and ‘C.’ I decided to try CARET.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t correct. And Wordlebot says it was unlucky, as 21 solutions remained. Most players in my position chose LATER (which I did consider), followed by TAPER and WATER.
At this point, I felt certain the word ended in ‘ER.’ Now, as noted by Wordlebot, a vast range of possibilities came to mind. PAPER, WADER, GAMER, WAVER, NAMER, BAKER, etc. etc. etc. I tried to wrack my memory for ones that had already been solutions, but my post-holiday haze was too heavy.
So, I decided to choose one of those common consonants I hadn’t used, ‘L,’ and guess a word with it. Even so, I had a number of options. I took a risk and guessed LAGER.
It was wrong, but I was right about the ‘L’ (and the ‘ER’ ending). And though Wordlebot says two possible solutions remained, the only one that came to mind was the correct one: LAYER. With that, I notched another 4/6.
Did you match or beat me in today’s Wordle? Send me an email(opens in new tab) to let me know how you did!
YESTERDAY’S WORDLE ANSWER #563, TUESDAY, JANUARY 3
Reading this in a later time zone? The Wordle answer for game #563 was ANTIC.
Hello Wordlers. Alan Martin back for a final Christmas-break Wordle, before I hand back to Kelly Woo for tomorrow.
And I managed my final puzzle slightly below par, finishing it in three turns, a little less than the 3.5 moves WordleBot says the average player will take.
I owe that to two things: my choice of start word, and my English Literature degree. Yes, I owe today’s success to one William Shakespeare. No, really.
I began with my usual pick of the best Wordle start words, AUDIT. And as mentioned above, this turned out to be an inspired move. AUDIT gave me two green vowels in ‘A’ and ‘I’ and turned the ‘T’ yellow, to boot.
“Extraordinarily lucky”. Not my words, but those of WordleBot, which points out that only four possible answers remained.
As you might have guessed from that grudging praise, AUDIT is hard to beat. But because every one of the letters in today’s Wordle answer is in the ten most common, a lot of WordleBot’s suggestions run it close. CRANE (7), SLANT (12) and TRACE (9) would all put you in a very good place.
Anyway, having four answers left isn’t much use if you’re unfamiliar with them, and I must confess I’m totally unaware of ASTIR and ATRIA, which are the other two incorrect answers.
I plumped, instead, for ATTIC. That’s quite an unusual second move for me, as it involves a double letter and no additional vowels. But I was pretty confident it would be right – and even if it wasn’t, it would at least reveal the position of the ‘T’.
When all but one letter turned green, my English Literature degree (finally) proved useful.
“As I perchance hereafter shall think meet, to put an ANTIC disposition on” says Hamlet in Act 1, Scene V as he vows to feign madness.
So that’s why I typed ANTIC – an archaic word meaning ‘bizarre’. It was only later that I realised it probably refered to the singular of “antics”. Ah well, I got the right answer either way!
Kelly Woo will be back tomorrow. Hope you enjoyed similar luck today, Wordlers.
PREVIOUS WORDLE ANSWERS
If you’re looking for a list of older Wordle answers, we can also help. Here’s a list going back 20 games.
- Wordle #563: ANTIC
- Wordle #562: SKIRT
- Wordle #561: WHINE
- Wordle #560: MANLY
- Wordle #559: MOLAR
- Wordle #558: HAVOC
- Wordle #557: IMPEL
- Wordle #556: CONDO
- Wordle #555: JUDGE
- Wordle #554: EXTRA
- Wordle #553: POISE
- Wordle #552: AORTA
- Wordle #551: EXCEL
- Wordle #550: LUNAR
- Wordle #549: THIRD
- Wordle #548: SLATE
- Wordle #547: TAPER
- Wordle #546: CHORD
- Wordle #545: PROBE
- Wordle #544: RIVAL
WORDLE TIPS — HOW TO WIN AT WORDLE
The best tip I can give is to use one of the best Wordle start words. I can’t stress this enough — it makes a massive difference.
Without one, you’ll be scrabbling around in the dark trying (and possibly failing) to find the right five letters (or possibly fewer) out of the 26 possibles. But clever people (not me) have done the math and identified the best start words based on both frequency in English and frequency among Wordle answers. So use them!
Secondly, think about combinations, especially at the start and end. Some options are far more common than others — for instance, SH, ST, CR and CH all feature frequently.
Vowels obviously need consideration too: not all Wordle answers will contain more than one, but plenty do, and some even have three. A good Wordle start word should have used a couple, but if they don’t feature you might well want to try another one or two on your next go.
Plus, remember the Y — this sometimes acts as a surrogate vowel, and is easy to forget. It also appears at the end of plenty of words.
Finally, try out possibilities. So long as you don’t press ‘Enter’ you can try possible answers to see how they look on screen. Put in likely letters plus any you know are definitely in the word, then mentally change one to the other available options. This technique has worked for me multiple times, and it’s particularly helpful when the word in question is not an obvious one (like FJORD or ISLET).
WHAT ELSE SHOULD I KNOW ABOUT WORDLE?
Wordle officially launched in October 2021, but actually started in June of that year and celebrated its first birthday on June 19, 2022. (You can read my thoughts on the 5 things Wordle needs to improve if it’s to keep us playing for its second year.)
However, it only grew in popularity towards the end of the year, then went viral in January as the world woke up to its charms. In fact, it proved so successful that The New York Times bought Wordle for a seven-figure sum in early February and the game is now part of NYT Games.
It’s played via the NYT Games website here(opens in new tab), and is entirely free. Both the NYT and the game’s creator, Josh Wardle, have stated that it will remain free. Some people think that Wordle has got harder since the NYT takeover, but it really hasn’t.
Wordle is a simple game in which your challenge is to guess a five-letter word in six attempts. Each time you guess, you’re told which of your chosen letters are in the target word, and whether they are in the right place.
If a letter is in the correct place, it turns green. If it’s in the word but in the wrong place, it turns yellow. And if it’s not in the word at all, it turns gray.
There’s just one puzzle a day, and everyone completes the same one. It resets at midnight each day. You’ll find more information about the game in our What is Wordle? article.
WORDLE ALTERNATIVES
If you’re eager for another game to pass the time while you wait, we’ve put together a list of the best Wordle alternatives. We also have a page on today’s Quordle answers, because it’s our favorite, and also today’s Heardle answer — because that’s great too.
Other Wordle alternatives to try are the ultra-stressful (but very good) Squabble and the soccer-themed, Who Are Ya?. We also like the geography-based Wordle clone Worldle, the Star Wars-themed SWordle and the math-based Mathler.
There are certainly plenty of options once you’ve finished Wordle for the day!
