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Wordle hint and answer (#613): How to solve the Wednesday February 22 Wordle

Stuck on the Wordle word for Feb 22? Read our hint or find the answer below!

Ollie's cat Kira cuddles up to a phone that is playing Wordle.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

Need a hint for today's Wordle answer? Wordle is a game beloved by so many, but sometimes love is hard, and so on occasions is Wordle. If today's puzzle has you frowning more than smiling, don't worry: we've all been there.

If you're after a little bit of help with today's puzzle, just below we've put together a few hints to get you thinking along the right lines. Or, if you're just after the answer, scroll down below the video to see the full spoiler plus definition.


Looking for today's solution? Check out the Wordle hint and answer for Tuesday 10th December!


Wordle hint: Clues for the Feb 22 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 begins and ends with the same letter.

Our second Wordle hint today is:

The middle letter is "P".

Our third Wordle hint today is:

It's a comparative adjective you might use to describe the relative quality of pieces of fruit.


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.

Looking for an alternative to Wordle? Here are eight of our favourite Wordle-likes to add to your morning puzzle routine.Watch on YouTube

What is today's Wordle answer on Feb 22?

It's time to reveal the answer to today's Wordle. The word is...

RIPER.

Well, that took a turn! This one started out looking alright, but there are so many words that end with "-IPER", and that double letter is especially tricky. Well done if you got there within six guesses, and commiserations if today wasn't your day.


What does the Wordle answer today mean?

You're probably familiar with the word "ripe", used to describe the readiness of crops for harvesting and eating, or more metaphorically to refer to something that's in a state of readiness or advancement. "Riper" is the comparative form, and while it's rarely used, its meaning is nevertheless self-evident: one thing is more ripe than another thing. You should probably eat the riper bananas first, to give the green ones more time to ripen; my 87-year-old grandfather is of a riper age than my 82-year-old grandmother; I moved to a new city for riper job opportunities.


How to share your Wordle results without spoilers

A screenshot of the Wordle sharing panel, with the sharing button highlighted and an example on the right of the spoiler-free sharing format which is copied to the clipboard when a user clicks the sharing button.
Use the built-in Wordle sharing feature to share your results without spoiling the answer!

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?

A Wordle grid with punctuation instead of letters for most of the tiles, and a red cross over the whole image.
You can type in any words you like, but be aware that the actual answer will never be a rude word.

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.

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