Today’s Wordle Review: April 14, 2023

Welcome to The Wordle Review. Be warned: This article contains spoilers for today’s puzzle. Solve Wordle first, or scroll at your own risk.

This month’s featured artist is Simone Noronha. You can read more about her here.

★★★★

Wordle 664 5/6

⬜⬜🟩⬜🟨 JOINT
🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜ THICK
🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜ THIRD
🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜ THIGH
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 THIEF

Up until about six months ago, I had zero interest in Wordle. As a writer for one of the most venerated publishing institutions of the English-speaking world (brag!), I was like: I already know many, many words. I don’t need to gamify them. Once, I went to South Africa on a reporting trip, and after I introduced myself as an employee of The New York Times, my new friend remarked, “Ah, yes, the Wordle people,” as if we don’t have 132 Pulitzer Prizes?

That all changed when I realized that Wordle doesn’t have to be a game. With the right group text, it can be a competition. My Wordle group chat has as many taunts and swears as it does green, yellow and black squares. (GUANO was a crazy day in the chat.) I don’t actually know these people — I was added on a whim after a conversation about other games — which makes it all the more fun. Most of the members don’t even have names in my phone. All I know, each time I open up the chat, is that somebody with a New Jersey area code got the day’s word in three tries, or that a certain musician-record producer-disc jockey-filmmaker-music journalist-actor HATES when he needs four turns to solve, or that somebody is at Disneyland with their kids and we just talk about that for a while.

I start my day with the Wordle, because it’s the perfect wake-up: exercising your brain while your body is still warm and surrounded by pillows. Some people in the group chat check the other people’s letters before they play, searching for clues, which is a skill I only understand in theory. I have no strategies or starting words: I just write whatever comes into my head, or let my fingers do the deciding. It’s never neat, but I rarely lose.

Four stars, because this was the first time in decades I’d thought to myself, “I before E, except after C,” and it was nice to bring some poetry into my day.

Today’s word is THIEF: a person who steals something, according to Webster’s New World Dictionary.

Today’s Statistics

This word is moderately challenging because of uncertainty, but a strategy can help.

The word contains a common letter pattern with five or six possible answers. Getting the answer in six guesses requires strategic choices at every guess.

Our Featured Artist

Simone Noronha is a South Asian illustrator and art director from Dubai who is based in New York. She enjoys weaving narratives and intricate details into her imagery with saturated palettes and the moody lighting that has become her signature. In an interview with Wired, she said, “I like to think of illustrative style as just our natural flaws shining through and doing the best with it.”

Today’s Statistics

Our Featured Artist

Further Reading