Wordle hint and answer (#609): How to solve the Saturday February 18 Wordle
Stuck on today's Wordle word for Feb 18? Read our hint or find the answer below!
Need a hint for today's Wordle answer? Wordle is a daily word puzzle game and, despite being free, it's fair to say that it's been putting food on my table for nearly a year at this point. People love Wordle, but Wordle sometimes doesn't love its fans back as kindly as it could, throwing out a challenge that just feels a bit too mean.
All of this is good news for writers like me, of course, who make our livings helping folks out when they get stuck in games. So: thank you for being here, dear reader, I appreciate you! If it's hints you want, they're directly below; and if you're here for the answer in full and/or its definition, please scroll down below the video (and just be wary of spoilers!).
Looking for today's solution? Check out the Wordle hint and answer for Friday 26th July!
Wordle hint: Clues for the Feb 18 Wordle word today
Before we reveal the Wordle answer for today, why not see if you can figure out the solution with the help of our handy hints below:
Our first Wordle hint today is:
Today's Wordle answer has the some vowel in the 1st and 3rd positions.
Our second Wordle hint today is:
Depending on context, this word means either to make use of or to help.
Our third Wordle hint today is:
If you entered the word "VIOLA", four squares would turn yellow.
Still having some trouble finding today's Wordle solution? To preserve your win streak, scroll down to reveal today's Wordle answer, and a description of the word's meaning.
What is today's Wordle answer on Feb 18?
It's time to reveal the answer to today's Wordle. The word is...
AVAIL.
Despite this word being very vowel-heavy, I hope it didn't cause you too much trouble. It's mostly made up of fairly common letters, so if you managed to pin down that tricky double-A in good time, there's a good chance you beat this one fair and square. Not today, Wordle!
What does the Wordle answer today mean?
"Avail" is broadly synonymous with "benefit", but it's mostly used in a couple of quite specific contexts. To "avail yourself" of something means to take advantage of a resource you find at your disposal, while something that is "to no avail" isn't of any use at all. The latter is one of those odd cases where you'd expect an opposite equivalent that just doesn't get used much in practice; when was the last time you heard of something that was "to much avail", after all?
How to share your Wordle results without spoilers
Wordle has a built-in method of sharing your results in a spoiler-free way, so that those you sent it to don't see today's Wordle word itself, only the colours in your grid to show how well you did.
To share your Wordle results, simply complete (or lose) today's Wordle, and then wait a moment for the statistics panel to appear on your screen. Then tap the "SHARE" button.
On PC this will simply copy the text into your clipboard, so you can then paste the text anywhere you wish, whether it's a private message or a status update on social media. On iPhone or Android, when you tap the "SHARE" button you'll have the option either to copy to clipboard, or to share the results directly to another app on your phone (such as WhatsApp or Twitter).
Using the built-in sharing feature of Wordle is a much nicer way of sharing your results than potentially spoiling the answer to those who haven't yet had the chance to play today's Wordle themselves. So we highly encourage you to use it!
How to play Wordle
Wordle is wonderfully simple. The aim is to guess the correct five-letter word within six guesses. After each guess, the letters of your chosen word will highlight green if they're in the correct place, yellow if they're in the wrong place, or grey if they don't appear in the word at all.
Using these clues you can start to narrow down the correct word. Head over to the Wordle site to try it for yourself!
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 from 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.