Today’s Wordle Review: May 13, 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 Colin Laurel. You can read more about him here.

★★★★★

Wordle 693 4/6

AROSE
ALTAR
AARGH
ACRID

I have a groundbreaking hypothesis about winning at Wordle and, since Pulitzer Prizes have just been awarded, I thought I would share it here. My hope is that someone will agree that my idea is brilliant and nominate me next year.

The hypothesis is as follows: Venting — the kind that involves outraged howling into the wind — can help solve a Wordle puzzle.

I bring this up because I was stuck after my second try with this puzzle. My go-to starting word, AROSE, got me an A and an R, with the R in the wrong place.

My next guess was ALTAR, which got me precisely nowhere, although I did remember to leave the A in the first position. Never say that I don’t learn from my mistakes. The last time I wrote a review, the puzzle included an S and I tried to make the answer plural, whereupon readers left a series of lighthearted comments that I am a twit and should know better. They had a point. The R was still in the wrong place.

I stared intently at the puzzle on my screen. I ran through the alphabet in order to see what combinations might work. I made lunch and then came back to stare at my screen some more. I showed the puzzle to my husband, who is now better at this game than I am, even though I introduced him to it. He scratched his head.

At this point I was frustrated, so I let out a half-joking cry of aggravation and that’s when a particularly subversive idea popped into my head. I typed the word AARGH into the game and it was accepted. Not only that, but the R was now in the right place.

My next guess was ACRID, which happened to be the correct answer. That could not have been a coincidence. I am convinced that it was the AARGH that did it, and I have already cleared a space on my desk for my Pulitzer.

Today’s word is ACRID, an adjective. According to Webster’s New World College Dictionary, it describes a sharp, bitter or irritating taste or smell.

Today’s Statistics

Today’s word is moderately challenging because of an unfamiliar letter pattern:

The word begins with a combination of letters that solvers are unlikely to guess, but the answer can usually be found using elimination strategies.

Our Featured Artist

Colin Laurel is a Black illustrator with an affinity for bold line work and joyous expression. He uses his identity as a lens through which to provide healing imagery to queer and marginalized communities, and he has referred to his art as a form of self-care. Mr. Laurel is influenced by vintage movie posters, production art, video games, music and mythology. With each piece, he hopes to convey humanity’s relationship with the beauty of nature.

Further Reading

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