Today’s Wordle #516 Hints, Clues And Answer For Thursday, November 17th

Another day, another Wordle. We’ve passed the halfway mark on November, and the final month of the year will be here before you know it. The way time passes—hurtling forward like some wild, reckless bullet—has me thinking too much about mortality, though I suppose not in an entirely grim or despairing way.

Writing a daily column/guide about Wordle has become almost like journaling for me, and until now I’ve never journaled at all. I’ve never kept a diary. I’ve never had the attention span. Oddly, in some ways it makes time speed up to count off the days like this; and in other ways, it slows things down. You pay attention more and so you realize how much time has passed, and how much time remains.

I’m still working it out, obviously. I started writing these in January of 2022. In less than two months, I’ll have been writing them for a year (though for some of that time I had help). Crazy to think about.

And on that note . . . .

Today’s Wordle Solution (Spoilers!)

The Hint: An oft-misspelled word since people always confuse which of its three versions is which.

The Clue: This word has a double-letter in it.

The Answer:

I came to the opening guess cedar by way of Donnie Darko. For some reason, I thought of Drew Barrymore’s character in that film, talking about how a famous linguist said once that, of all the phrases in the English language, cellar door was the most beautiful. But, of course, cellar is too long for Wordle, and door too short. But from those words sprung cedar in my mind.

That got me down to 99 problems, and a Wordle wasn’t one. I considered guessing something with all new letters next—ghost or hoist or some such—but went, instead, with tripe in case I could rearrange the yellow boxes into green. This ended up being a great choice, narrowing the field spectacularly. At this point I could think of just two possibilities: three and there (though Wordle Bot later informed me that torte was also an option; it never crossed my mind—that would be a tough one!)

I guessed there and got lucky. It very easily could have been three. Three’s a magic number! It’s the number of guesses it took me to solve this Wordle—and the number it took Wordle Bot as well. Huzzah for us both!