Wordle answer (Wednesday 7 December 2022): Wordle word of the day #536 and hints
Hints and the answer to today's Wordle word
Looking for the Wordle answer for Wednesday 7 December 2022? December keeps ticking along, and so does Wordle. The popular puzzle game brings a new five-letter word every day, but after over 500 different words, it can be hard to know what's left. I mean, there surely aren't that many five-letter words, right? Apparently there are, and Wordle just keeps chugging through them. Fortunately, those of you struggling to come up with potential solutions can stop worrying, as we're here to help.
In this guide, you'll find three helpful hints that you can use to guess the Wordle answer today. If you're still struggling and just want to skip the puzzle altogether, then keep scrolling to find the Wordle answer itself.
Looking for today's solution? Check out the Wordle hint and answer for Friday 26th July!
Wordle December 7 hints
The Wordle answer today is tough, which might leave those with a high streak feeling pretty nervous. There's no need to panic, though, as you can find our clues for the Wordle answer today below:
- The Wordle answer today starts with a "J".
- It has two vowels.
- It was a duel held between two knights on horseback in medieval times.
Wordle answer today December 7
It's time to reveal the answer to today's Wordle. The word is...
JOUST.
Jousting used to sound so cool as a kid. We did a castle week at school, and learning about this medieval pasttime made it seem fun. Knights would charge at each other on horseback, using a lance to knock their opponent to the ground. The picture books made it look like a friendly competition! Watching Game Of Thrones and House Of The Dragon has made me think otherwise, because their jousting seems really violent.
If you want to avoid being challenged to a joust yourself, then we'd recommend keeping the Wordle answer today a secret. Avoid spoiling it for others until tomorrow, when a new word will appear to stump us all.
How to play Wordle
Wordle is a very straightforward word guessing game. The aim is to guess the correct five-letter word in just six guesses. With each guess, the individual letters of your chosen word will highlight green if they're in the correct place, or yellow if they're in the wrong place. If a letter doesn't appear in the solution word at all, it'll remain unhighlighted.
Using these clues you can start to narrow down the correct word by figuring out which letters are included in the word and in which positions they belong. Head over to the Wordle site to try it for yourself. Just remember: there's only one Wordle puzzle released per day, so if you want to play again, you'll have to wait until tomorrow.
How did Wordle begin?
Wordle began life as a little family game created by software engineer Josh Wardle. He created the game so that he and his partner could play a fun little word game together during the pandemic, and they quickly realised that there was something quite special in this simple little guessing game. So after a bit of refinement, Wardle released it to the public on his website, Power Language.
The game was released in October 2021, and by the end of the year the game had two million daily players. It became a viral hit, thanks in large part to the ease with which players could share their results in a spoiler-free manner on Twitter and other social media sites. In January 2022, Wardle accepted an offer form the New York Times to acquire Wordle for a seven-figure sum. Well done, Mr Wardle. Well done indeed.
Are any Wordle words not allowed?
You can type in pretty much any five-letter word in the English language and Wordle will accept it as a guess. However, the answer is picked each day from a much smaller list of more common five-letter words. There are still thousands of possible answers, of course, but it means the answer will never be a word as obscure as, say, "THIOL", or "CAIRD", or "MALIC" (yes, those are all real words).
There are very occasional words which the New York Times will choose not to publish as the day's Wordle answer, perhaps for reasons relating to recent news or politics. For example, shortly after news broke that Roe v Wade might be overturned in the United States, the NYT decided to change the March 30th word from "FETUS" to "SHINE", as the feeling was that the word "fetus" was too politically charged a word in the context of recent events.
The New York Times has also been careful never to allow what they consider to be rude words as the answer to a Wordle puzzle. But of course there's nothing stopping you from using even the dirtiest of words as guesses, as long as they're accepted words in the dictionary, and as long as you realise that they'll never end up being the answer.
Is Wordle getting too easy for you?
If Wordle is starting to get too easy, there are a few ways you can make the game more challenging for yourself. The first choice is to turn on Hard Mode. You can do this on the Wordle site by clicking the cog icon in the top-right of the screen. Hard Mode means that any highlighted letters must be used in all future guesses. This stops you from using the common tactic of choosing two words like "OUNCE" and "PAINS" to test all five vowels early on.
You can take it up another notch by playing by what we call "Ultra-Hard" rules. This means that every guess you enter must potentially be the answer. If you were just playing on Hard Mode, and you typed "MOIST", and the "O" appeared yellow, then nothing would stop you from making "POLAR" as your next word, even though it couldn't possibly be the answer because you already know the "O" is in the wrong place. If you play by "Ultra-Hard" rules, that's not allowed. You must adhere to every clue, and make sure every single word you enter is potentially the answer.
If after all that Wordle is still too easy for you, then you could always try one of the many other Wordle-inspired games online that have cropped up over the past year. One of our favourites is Worldle, in which you must guess a country of the world based on its shape. There's also Waffle, which is about swapping letters in a completed grid to complete all the words; Moviedle, which shows you an entire movie in a tiny space of time and challenges you to guess the movie within six guesses; and Quordle, which tasks you with solving four Wordles at once with the same guesses.
If you need some help with future Wordles, be sure to check out our list of the best Wordle starting words for the greatest chance of success. You can also check out our archive of past Wordle answers to see which words have been chosen previously.
Use our Wordle Solver tool to help you figure out the answer to any Wordle in moments! Just pop your current guesses in the grid and watch the tool instantly give you all the potential answers.